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Category:    Home > Reviews > Thriller > Mystery > Comedy > Charade (1963/Criterion Collection Blu-ray)

Charade (1963/Criterion Collection Blu-ray)

 

Picture: B     Sound: C+     Extras: B     Film: B

 

 

Cary Grant was a leading man all the way in Hollywood, making more classics than he always gets credit for and in several genres.  His last great film may very well be Stanley Donen’s Charade, the director’s ever-clever, classy 1963 comedy thriller that proved he was a more formidable director than just a giant of the Hollywood Musical.  Best of all, he is paired with Audrey Hepburn as married woman Regina Lampert, who is unhappy with her marriage because her husband is too absentee for their own good.  However, she’s too late as he has been killed and now everyone is starting to go after her!

 

What do they want?  What did he have?  Where is it?  Is it really worth that much money to kill over?  Mrs. Lampert may not last long as a Ms. unless she can figure this out, and all while on vacation in France!

 

Peter Stone (Arabesque, Jigsaw, The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three) and Marc Behm (Help!, The Return Of Dr. Mabuse) co-wrote the story The Unsuspecting Wife that the film was based on, with Stone doing the screenplay and yes, it breaks the fourth wall verbally at least (maybe more than it should?) and manages to do this without missing a beat.  I like the film and it holds up very well, especially when compared to the early Bond films (including those recent Blu-rays) and Hitchcock films of the time, as well as ones that preceded it in the same mode.

 

And of course, Hepburn and Grant have great chemistry together throughout, with Hepburn still on a role as one of the top stars and icons of the 1960s.  This is a film that not only understands their charm, appeal and star power, but also that thrillers and comedies both share a long history of suspense together and this one has balance between the two like no other film ever made.  Donen, Behm and Stone totally understand what they are doing and it is a classic of both genres in its own unique way.  Some may wish it were more thriller or comedy, but in the end, Charade gets the last laugh with its wit and large-scale effectiveness working as well as any of its contemporary films.

 

Finally, the other supporting actors who made this work so well deserve mention, especially since they became even bigger stars afterwards including the great Walter Matthau (moving on to more big screen work after going between film and TV for years), James Coburn (who would soon be spy Derek Flint in two hit films), George Kennedy (in one of his early big screen breakthrough roles) and legendary character actor Ned Glass, in the middle of a 45-year career one that is one of the greatest in Hollywood history.  They too are all the more reason to see or reacquaint yourself with Charade.

 

 

I was not very happy with Criterion’s two DVDs of the film, despite having the best extras to ever come with the film.  First was a disappointing letterboxed DVD, then they replaced it with an anamorphically enhanced DVD that was no serious improvement.  Though this was not as bad as the two DVDs of Jacques Tati’s Playtime (now in a superior Blu-ray from Criterion, as reviewed elsewhere on this site), it fell short of the often impressive letterboxed 2002 VCI DVD of the film that was the best version of the film for me until this Blu-ray as it had a real three-strip, dye-transfer Technicolor print (despite its fading and other issues) that Criterion did not have.

 

The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image is a new High Definition master from a 35mm Interpositive that received the usual top-rate cleaning treatment, but that also means you get more grain than a new Technicolor print would have had.  Some shots here are as good as 35mm prints I have seen of the film over the years, but some other parts could use some work and if Universal could find a real Technicolor print, that would help.  Those who have seen the endlessly bad prints that have been out from no-name companies since the VHS and Beta days will be particularly impressed by what they see here.  Detail and depth can be terrific, but grain and some color limits are an issue.  Director of Photography Charles Lang, Jr. (Wait Until Dark, The Big Heat, One Eyed-Jacks) did a great job of shooting this film as a classy romantic comedy and suspenseful thriller at the same time, with camera work rightly compared to Hitchcock films, but also at the level of the best Grade-A Hollywood productions to that time.  You can see the following three frames from the out of point VCI DVD at the following links and compare them to the Blu-ray yourself at these links:

 

Still One

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10316/Charade+Still+#1+%E2%80%93+Mrs

 

Still Two

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10317/Charade+Still+#2+%E2%80%93+The

 

Still Three

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10318/Charade+Still+#3+%E2%80%93+The

 

 

Also note the great title sequence design for the opening credits by the great Maurice Binder (Dr. No, Thunderball, Arabesque, Barbarella, all Bond films from You Only Live Twice to Licence To Kill) created the great graphics that have forever become the visually identified with the film.

 

 

The PCM 1.0 Mono sound will show up on home theater systems as a center-channel-only track and it sounds good for its age and not bad here, though this might be a little lower in volume than expected.  Criterion and Universal used 35mm magnetic soundtrack masters to make the sound here, but music rights are the only reason I could imagine they did not add Henry Mancini’s terrific, influential (think of Bill Conti’s work on the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, for instance) superior music score to the film and make this a stereophonic Blu-ray.  Mancini fans and audiophiles know how popular the album is and have demanded an expanded version that still has not materialized.  JVC actually issued an exceptional stereo version from their XRCD series (an XRCD 2 disc in this case, unreviewed) that sounds incredible for the age of the recording and is recommended to fans who can still get a copy.  Too bad those track (or similar material) could not have been added here, even as an extra.

 

Extras include a booklet with tech information, illustrations, and a fine essay on the film by Bruce Eder, while the Blu-ray has the original theatrical trailer at 1.33 (in low definition, which one of their DVDs did not) and a great feature length audio commentary by Donen and Screenwriter Stone worth hearting after seeing the film.

 

Donen was unhappy by critics and other oversimplifying the film as just a Hitchcockian imitator, which missed its clever deconstructive aspects, so he made his next film a spy thriller called Arabesque three years later (also at Universal) and pulled out all the stops to make it more than just another Hitchcockian Spy thriller.  It worked and was issued on a Gregory Peck DVD set Universal issued, but it would be nice if Criterion followed up this Blu-ray with a special edition of that underrated thriller.  Until then, Charade on Blu-ray is a great addition to the Criterion line-up and is definitely recommended.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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