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Charade
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.
1963 · Directed by Stanley Donen · 113 min · Comedy · Mystery · Romance · Screenplay in the scene database · 48 frames
Tagline
Is anyone really who they seem to be?
Plot
While on holiday in the French Alps, Regina "Reggie" Lampert, an American expatriate working as a simultaneous interpreter, tells her friend Sylvie that she is divorcing her husband Charles. She also meets Peter Joshua, a charming American.
On her return to Paris, she finds her apartment stripped bare. A police inspector says that Charles auctioned off their belongings, then was murdered after leaving Paris. Reggie is given Charles's small travel bag containing a letter addressed to her, a ship ticket to Venezuela, four passports in multiple names and nationalities, and miscellaneous personal items. At Charles's sparsely attended funeral, three men show up to view the body. One sticks a pin into the corpse to confirm Charles is dead. Another uses a hand mirror to see if he is breathing.
Reggie is summoned to meet CIA administrator Hamilton Bartholomew at the American Embassy. She learns that the three men are Herman Scobie, Leopold W. Gideon and Tex Panthollow. During World War II, they, Charles, and Carson Dyle were assigned by the OSS to deliver $250,000 ($4.6 million in current dollars) in gold to the French Resistance, but instead stole it. Carson was wounded in a German ambush and left behind. Charles double-crossed the others, taking all the gold. The three survivors are after the missing money, as is the U.S. government. Hamilton insists that Reggie has it, even if she does not know what or where it is—and that she is in great danger.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Peter Stone
- Cinematography: Charles Lang
- Edited by: Jim Clark
- Music: Henry Mancini
- Produced by: Stanley Donen
Cast
- Cary Grant as Peter Joshua
- Audrey Hepburn as Regina Lampert
- Walter Matthau as Hamilton Bartholemew
- James Coburn as Tex Panthollow
- George Kennedy as Herman Scobie
- Dominique Minot as Sylvie Gaudel
- Ned Glass as Leopold Gideon
- Jacques Marin as Edouard Grandpierre
- Paul Bonifas as Mr. Felix
- Thomas Chelimsky as Jean-Louis Gaudel
Production
- Country: United Kingdom, United States of America
- Language: English, French, German, Italian
- Studios: Stanley Donen Films, Universal Pictures
- Budget: $4,000,000
- Box office: $13,475,000
- Themes: central intelligence agency (cia), paris, france, espionage, age difference, loss of loved one, widow, spy, interpreter, stamp, caper
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