Event Film and Video Screenings Charade

“Charade” [NR] 1963, 1h 53m

Directed by Stanley Donen, this Hitchcock-esque film is an elegantly- styled romantic thriller starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, with a memorable Henry Mancini score that vividly evokes the streets and cafés of Paris. Hepburn returns from a skiing holiday to learn that her husband has been murdered and their apartment stripped bare. This scene inspired Mancini’s theme song for the film: “a sad little serenade,” in Johnny Mercer’s lyric phrase. It would be one of the composer’s many contributions to the Great American Songbook; “Charade” remains a classic, recorded recently by Michael Bublé. Mancini weaves fragments of the theme throughout the film, in various guises, and deftly deploys numbers like “Bateau Mouche,” “Bistro” and “Mambo Parisienne”—along with gypsy music and a bolero—as sophisticated backdrops for the story. After a seemingly casual meeting with Grant, Hepburn finds herself pursued by a trio of menacing crooks, former Army cronies of her husband, who are tracking a stolen treasure from a wartime heist they believe is still in her possession. The dashing but mysterious Grant appears to be attempting to help her, while a blustery CIA official, Walter Matthau, demands her cooperation. Three murders later, Hepburn must decide which man to trust.