Charade (1963)
Directed by Stanley Donen
After Regina Lampert falls for the dashing Peter Joshua on a skiing holiday in the French Alps, she discovers upon her return to Paris that her husband has been murdered. Soon, she and Peter are giving chase to three of her late husband's World War II cronies, Tex, Scobie and Gideon, who are after a quarter of a million dollars the quartet stole while behind enemy lines.
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What critics compared Charade to
The Tourist (2010)
Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Visuals Dialogue Plot Characters Themes
At the very least, it ought to play out like a slick imitation of a Stanley Donen film, like Charade (1963).
They also share some decent dialogue, the sharpness of which harkens back to romantic capers like “The Lady Eve’’ and “Charade.’’
What it was not, however, was a particularly dazzling piece of filmmaking, which makes von Donnersmarck precisely the wrong guy to direct The Tourist, a cosmopolitan trifle along the lines of Charade or Alfred Hitchcocks To Catch A Thief.
The motivations of characters shift as easily as Cary Grant’s in “Charade.”
And then, if you're thinking about The Tourist, with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie (who were perhaps thinking about Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, and Audrey Hepburn), well, think about adding To Catch a Thief or Charade to your Netflix queue instead.
"The Tourist" is a facsimile of a masquerade of a gloss on "Charade," and on all the lesser cinematic charades that followed in the wake of director Stanley Donen 's 1963 picture.
(The old Cary Grant charmer “Charade” did this perfectly.)
While watching the new Tom Cruise-Cameron Diaz spy thriller “ Knight and Day ,” I kept flashing back to Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint in Alfred Hitchcock ’s “ North by Northwest ” and Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Stanley Donen ’s “Charade,” the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made.
But since Knight and Day really wants to be Charade (1963), it kept reminding me that as much as Cruise and Diaz aren’t Kutcher and Heigl, neither are they Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn—by a very long shot indeed.
"Knight and Day" aspires to the light charm of a romantic action comedy like “Charade” or “ Romancing the Stone ,” but would come closer if it dialed down the relentless action.
He says he wanted to pattern this on two Cary Grant caper films, Stanley Donen�s, Charade (1963) and Alfred Hitchock�s North by Northwest (1959).
The reason director/co-writer James Mangold's ("3:10 to Yuma" and "Walk the Line") carefree homage to globe-trotting capers like Audrey Hepburn's "Charade" works so effectively has more to do with teamwork than plot.
The movie gives off something reminiscent of old caper romances like Charade, How to Steal a Million, A Fish Called Wanda, the Ocean’s movies, and the underrated Duplicity, in which Julia Roberts and Clive Owen keep their con going so long that what they’re left with is each other.
Contemporary audiences are less likely to be reminded of Charade and To Catch a Thief than that other Grant wannabe, George Clooney, in the Oceans movies, but it’s a change of pace.
On the most basic level, the con-artist romance Focus is a Cary Grant movie in the North By Northwest or Charade mold.
Smith frankly doesn’t seem all too happy throughout “Focus”—he certainly doesn’t manage the sort of charm that Cary Grant brought effortlessly to a similarly convoluted piece like “Charade.”
When Julia thinks she sees the same man (Burn Gorman) following her to a movie (she watches “Charade,” a classic that clearly inspired this project) and then to a grocery store, her panic rises, especially when she sees news reports about a serial killer named The Spider.
There’s nevertheless a clear love for classically straight-forward suspense cinema dripping from every pore of this effort, perhaps best indicated by a mid-film sequence in which Julia heads to the cinema to watch Stanley Donen’s Charade.
In one truly spine-chilling scene, seated right behind her at a matinee showing of Charade .
A grocery store pursuit is shot well; a sparse screening of Charade is downright intense.
The setup is pure Hitchcock (an element Okuno playfully acknowledges when Julia runs into a movie theater to watch "Charade," before someone creeps up on her), but the tone is closer to the nightmarish dread of "The Vanishing."
She first feels him following her as she wanders into the middle of a matinee screening of “Charade,” then to the grocery store where she almost buys cigarettes — she’d given up smoking a few months ago, but when she ultimately relents and buys a pack, it serves as a great way to show signs of stress on screen.
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The screenplay abounds in convolutions that undercut expectations and take matters in new directions, including a major one toward the close that Russell and Singer might have borrowed from Peter Stone’s “Charade.”
Half of "Rogue Nation" belongs to the digital realm of trickery; the other half delivers a more gratifying combination of bodies in space, usually going at each other, along with crosses, double-crosses and settings reminiscent of everything from the 1966-1973 TV show to Hitchcock to Stanley Donen's "Charade."
Devoted watchers of Turner Classic Movies and collectors of Criterion will make themselves giddy counting the references to classic thrillers of the ‘30s and beyond (the very first thing in this writer’s notes on the film is an all-caps “CHARADE!”)…
Even though it’s not Hitch, Stanley Donen’s Charade is an obvious tonal influence.
Another asset is its literate and sophisticated dialogue (by John Brancato and Michael Ferris, who also wrote "The Net" ) reminiscent of Stanley Donen's "Charade" (written by the estimable Peter Stone).
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This a movie where kids go to a lower-rung picture palace to see Charade (1963) and where the TVs always seem to be tuned to cheesy black-and-white 1950s sci-fi movies.
In line for the movies (a revival house showing of "Charade"), Jay suggests a game of 'trade,' in which each picks out someone in the crowd they wish they could change places with while the other guesses who it might be and why.
Jeff (Jake Weary) accompanies Jay to a classy old movie theater to see a revival of Charade.
At its best, which is fleeting, “Murder Mystery” evokes an unholy mix of Agatha Christie and “ National Lampoon’s European Vacation ,” with an aspirational dash of the 1963 Stanley Donen romantic actioner, “ Charade .”