Charade (1963)

Directed by Stanley Donen. With Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, James Coburn. Romance and suspense ensue in Paris as a woman is pursued by several men who want a fortune her murdered husband had stolen. Whom can she trust?

Charade is a 1963 American romantic comedy mystery film directed by Stanley Donen, written by Peter Stone and Marc Behm, and starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn star in this stylish comedy-thriller directed by Stanley Donen, very much in a Hitchcock vein. Grant plays Peter Joshua, who meets Reggie Lampert (Hepburn) in Paris and later offers to help her when she discovers that her husband has been murdered. After the funeral, Reggie is summoned to the embassy and warned by agent/friend Bartholemew (Walter Matthau) that her late husband helped steal 250,000 dollars during the war and that the rest of the gang is after the money as well. When three of the men who attended her husband's funeral begin to harass her, Reggie goes to Joshua for help, at which time Joshua confesses that his name is actually Alexander Dyle, the brother of a fourth accomplice in the gold theft. The three men from the funeral are revealed to be the three other accomplices in the crime, and though she knows next to nothing of the heist, Reggie is caught in a ring of suspense as she is followed by the shadowy trio, all after the money. Apparently, the only person she can trust is Joshua/Dyle -- until Bartholomew tells Reggie that the fourth accomplice had no brother, and Joshua/Dyle reveals that he is, in fact, a crook named Adam Canfield. Now Reggie doesn't know where to turn. The musical score by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini was nominated for an Academy Award. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

In the wake of the Kennedy assassination Hollywood suffered a crisis of identity. But, as the stars retired and television boomed, Stanley Donen's Charade provided one last gleam of a golden age. By Michael Newton

When he was just six years old, Thomas Chelimsky was plucked out of obscurity to star in Charade—and he remembers the whole experience like it was yesterday.

Overview of Charade, 1963, directed by Stanley Donen, with Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, at Turner Classic Movies

The first shot of Charade shows a pistol swinging ominously into a close-up and Audrey Hepburn gets a squirt of water right in the eye. And so it goes: Chara...

Charade (1963) is a classic cat-and-mouse, "Hitchcockian" romantic comedy and enigmatic thriller all in one, from director Stanley Donen.

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This film is often called the “best Hitchcock movie Hitchcock didn’t make” because although the film feels like Hitchcock, it was actually directed by Stanley Donen. But Charade is Hitchcockian on purpose. Donen meant it as an homage and near-spoof of Hitchcock’s films, especially those with Cary Grant. As Donen later said, "I always wanted to make…