The best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock never made

Charade was made in 1963 by director Stanley Donen, and it is the only film Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn ever made together, rewritten at Grant's request so that she chases him. Screenwriter Peter Stone recalled Grant's reasoning: "I cannot chase this girl, I am too old, and she is too young."

Stone's change made Hepburn's character the pursuer, which eased Grant's discomfort about playing opposite a much younger woman.

The story is a romantic thriller set in Paris. Hepburn plays Reggie Lampert, a woman pursued by several men who want a fortune her murdered husband had stolen. Grant plays the mysterious stranger she goes after.

Where did the script come from?

Stone and Marc Behm first wrote it as The Unsuspecting Wife, and no studio would buy it. Stone turned it into a novelette titled Charade and published it in Redbook magazine. Donen read it and quickly bought the rights. It was Stone's first feature screenplay.

Filming began in Paris on October 22, 1962, in unusually cold weather. The opening ski-resort scenes in the French Alps were shot over five days in early January 1963.

Why do critics call it a Hitchcock film?

Critics have long called Charade the best Hitchcock film that Hitchcock never made. He had no role in it. The comparison comes from the setup: an innocent person caught in a murder plot, and a stranger who may not be who he says.

Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer's title song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 36th Academy Awards. It did not win.

Charade opened in New York on December 5, 1963, as the Christmas film at Radio City Music Hall, and broke the theater's box office record. It grossed about $13.5 million in the US. President Kennedy had been assassinated that November, so the line "At any moment we could be assassinated" was overdubbed as "eliminated" for the release. Official video releases restored the original line.

Why are there so many copies of it?

The film's on-screen notice reads "MCMLXIII by Universal Pictures Company, Inc. and Stanley Donen Films, Inc. All Rights Reserved." It leaves out the word "Copyright," the abbreviation "Copr." and the © symbol.

Under US law before 1978, that omission is widely held to have put the film in the public domain on release. This is common understanding, not a court ruling. Mancini's score stayed under copyright.

That is why Charade turns up in many different copies, and some still carry the dubbed "eliminated." The Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry in 2022.

The film is for anyone who wants to see Grant and Hepburn together, in the one film they made, with a thriller plot and a script reshaped around its star's nerves.

Comedy