Short plot
Regina "Reggie" Lampert meets a charming stranger, Peter Joshua, on a skiing holiday in Megève. She returns to Paris, planning to ask her husband Charles for a divorce, but finds all of their possessions gone. The police notify her that Charles has been murdered, thrown from a train. They give Regina her husband's travel bag. At the funeral, Regina is struck by three odd characters who show up to view the body, including one who sticks the corpse with a pin and another who places a mirror in front of the corpse's mouth and nose, both to verify he is dead.
She is summoned to the U.S. Embassy, where she meets CIA administrator Hamilton Bartholomew . He informs her Charles was involved in a theft during World War II. As part of the OSS (the predecessor of the CIA), Charles, "Tex" Panthollow, Herman Scobie, Leopold W. Gideon and Carson Dyle were parachuted behind enemy lines to deliver $250,000 in gold to the French Resistance. Instead, they buried it, but were then ambushed by a German patrol. Dyle was badly wounded and left to die; the rest got away. Charles doublecrossed them, digging up the gold and selling it. He was killed but the money remains missing – and the U.S. government wants it back. Reggie recognizes the oddballs from the funeral in pictures shown to her by Bartholomew. He insists she has the money, even if she doesn't know where it is...
Review
Suspenseful and charming, funny and frenetic, and making full use of its Parisian location and capable cast (as well as a memorable Mancini score), director Stanley Donen pulls together a superior film that, in many ways, serves as a signpost of the changing times.
CHARADE was released at the end of 1963, after JFK's assasination (in fact, that word was used in the film by Audrey Hepburn, and was dubbed out in certain showings during its initial release), and on the eve of the Beatles invasion. Viewed today, it plays almost like a marriage of the Golden Age of Hollywood and the darker, more explicit modern era of film.
This is an entertaining thriller/comedy with a great cast. Audrey Hepburn, with incredible beauty and grace, gives another of her sparkling performances, and is perfect for this clever plot that actually keeps us guessing until the very end.
Cary Grant is as smooth as always, Walter Matthau looks super sleazy in a scrappy mustache, Ned Glass is funny as a sneezing crook, and it's rounded out with George Kennedy and James Coburn, who drops lit matches on our lovely Audrey !
It's well written by Peter Stone, with some funny lines...my favorite is: "you fell for it like an egg from a tall chicken".
Henry Mancini's score is delightful, and the Oscar nominated theme song is the kind of melody one is humming long after the film is over...and it's given several interpretations, like the "James Bond" version for the titles.
語句
frenetic 激しい 熱狂
signpost 手掛かり 道標
grace 優雅さ 優美さ 上品さ
sleazy 薄汚れた 自堕落な
scrappy けんか腰な 戦闘的な 断片的な
round out 締めくくる
crook いかさま ペテン師 悪党
sneez くしゃみ
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