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Charade
Blue Glow Buffy vs. Angel in season ender; "Frasier," "NYPD Blue," "Dawson" finales
20th Century Vox Hoboken hero
Bulworth
Art amnesia?
The Horse Whisperer Not Wilde enough Woo
Deep Impact
Stephen Fry |
With his 1935 thriller "The 39 Steps," Alfred Hitchcock introduced a delectable formula: Take a casually elegant couple, throw them together in extraordinary circumstances and watch their banter gradually evolve into endearments without ever once losing its wit. Filmmakers have never stopped trying to duplicate that supremely pleasurable confection. Hitchcock himself returned to it in "The Lady Vanishes" (1938), gave it dark erotic undertones in "Notorious" (1946) and turned out a couple of late models in "To Catch a Thief" (1955) and "North by Northwest" (1959). Carol Reed borrowed the star of "The Lady Vanishes," Margaret Lockwood (and a few other things besides), for his try at the genre, "Night Train" (1940), a modest, enjoyable entertainment marred by some heavy-handed anti-Nazi propaganda. More recently, Kenneth Branagh went deliciously over the top in "Dead Again," a wonderfully loony and sophisticated romantic thriller about a desire that persists beyond the grave. In some of these pictures -- as paperback thriller blurbs and coming attraction announcers used to say -- the fate of the free world hangs in the balance. In others, it's merely the hero and heroine's skins -- no matter. The best movies descended from "The 39 Steps" understand that what really counts is the romance. The dangers the new lovers face function like the complications in romantic comedy: as a series of tests the lovers must face to prove that they trust each other. And just as crucial, the scrapes they get into test their style, their cool, their wit. Their ability to act as deftly under pressure as they do at ease endears these characters to us, just as we love Fred Astaire as much for the way he strides across a room, one hand thrust casually in his pocket, as for the way he dances. In "Charade" (1963) the most sophisticated of these movies, a thug forces Cary Grant to climb to the roof of the Parisian office of American Express for the unexpressed purpose of pushing him off. Instead of panicking, Grant offers a dismissive complaint: "All right, but the view had better be worth it." He's so relaxed that when he gets to the roof, he turns his back on his would-be killer, puts on his glasses, gives nighttime Paris a cursory glance and says "Mmm, very pretty," like someone who's been forced to look at one too many holiday snaps. That almost perversely dégagé attitude is the defining spirit of "Charade." When the picture's director, Stanley Donen, danced his acceptance of an honorary Oscar earlier this year, as charming as one of his films, people said that he's exactly the man they'd expect to have made movies like "Singin' in the Rain" and "It's Always Fair Weather." Well, "Charade" is exactly the type of thriller you'd expect a man like Donen to make. "Charade," which takes place in Paris, dances, it capers. Even the moments when the movie's trio of bad guys (James Coburn, George Kennedy, Ned Glass) come to their gruesome ends are presented as macabre jokes, as if you'd been passed a book of Charles Addams drawings over cocktails. As the title suggests, this is a prankish, playful picture, with a pair of charming jokers at the top of its deck, Grant and Audrey Hepburn. They play the movie in what might be called high deadpan. Even when the imperiled Hepburn lets her nerves get the better of her, she puts quotation marks around her frightened reactions that are as exquisite as a pair of Cartier cuff links. Hepburn exaggerates so that we can see she's playacting, and the movie's light, sparkling tone remains undisturbed. The plot kicks off with Hepburn learning that the husband she was about to divorce (because she felt she didn't know him) has been murdered. Then she finds out just how much she didn't know. He had stolen money from the government during the war, then double-crossed the Army buddies who were in on the theft. They figure his widow has the stolen boodle and come to Paris to get it. Grant is the beguiling stranger who steps in to lend her a hand. He's infinitely more appealing than her dead dullard of a husband, but that's not saying much. After all, Cary Grant is more appealing than almost anyone. (There must be at least two or three exceptions, but I've never met them.) The complication is that Grant may be harboring as many secrets as the late unlamented. Shifting effortlessly from identity to identity, he poses, in the course of the picture, as a businessman, the revenge-seeking brother of one of the bad guys' victims and a professional thief who's also after the stolen money. Each time Hepburn catches him in a lie, he simply comes up with a new name and occupation. "The man's the same even if the name is different," he assures her. True: gray hair and all, no matter what name he gives, he's unmistakably Cary Grant, dapper and viewing the world with an amused reticence that masks a true romantic. The fun of "Charade" has less to do with its who's-got-the-money plot (which is nonetheless very well worked out) than with seeing Hepburn learning to trust the instincts that lead her to nuzzle up to Grant whenever they're alone. This is the movie in which Hepburn says to Grant, "Do you know what's the matter with you? Nothing," as a beatific, dreamy smile breaks like a slow wave across her face. That line also sums up the approach to romance shared by both the "The 39 Steps" and the great American romantic comedies of the '30s. Those pictures got rid of all the mush that clogged up most movie love scenes and replaced it with a style that's quintessentially American. All the longing and idealism is clothed beneath breezy practicality, as comfortably chic as Grant's impeccably tailored suits and Hepburn's Givenchy dresses. That style isn't an evasion of emotion, but a way to avoid diluting the feelings that matter. Love, in romantic comedy (which is essentially what "Charade" is), is too big a subject for sentimental spooning. And, the internal logic of these pictures goes, if you can talk lightheartedly about something as monumental as love, you can be flip and sassy about whatever else comes up. It's simply a more gracious way of getting through the day. In "Charade," with killers breathing down their necks almost every minute, Grant and Hepburn play their scenes as a series of japes and come-ons, with the entranced serenity of two people playing ping-pong while gazing -- grinning -- into each other's eyes. Made when the studio system was on its last legs (and four years before "Bonnie and Clyde" announced a new American cinema), "Charade" still feels fresh, quick-witted, nothing like the artificial, airless Hollywood pictures of its time. That's a tribute to the cleverness and taste of the people involved: Donen, screenwriter Peter Stone, cinematographer Charles Lang and Henry Mancini (who contributed a lovely score, alternately percussive and lyrical). And it's because Donen (who was living in Europe) got the camera out of the studio. You wouldn't mistake "Charade" for the French New Wave -- much of it was filmed on sets -- but, apart from the plot and the charisma of its stars, the movie could almost be a Hollywood version of an imagistic poem celebrating Paris.
When I think of "Charade" I remember a Punch and Judy show in a park framed
by autumn leaves; an ice-cream vendor by the Seine; a flea market for stamp
collectors; an illuminated phone booth in an empty Metro station; the Opera
House at night; the slim, solitary figure of Hepburn smoking at twilight in
an elegant apartment stripped to its gilt-framed walls. Each of those shots
is evanescent, over much too quickly, like the delight of the movie itself.
You content yourself with memories, like the elderly stamp collector in one
heartbreaking scene who surrenders the precious stamps he's briefly
possessed. "For a few moments," he says, "they were mine. That is enough."
The chemistry of Grant and Hepburn seems even more precious, and for two
hours it is all the treasure we could ever desire.
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