March 31: Charade (1964 -- Stanley Donen)

★★★

Gee…. I wonder if the silly humor you see in so many 60s/70s mainstream movies has lost some of its ooomph when we see it from now.  I think of the painful scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Paul Newman hamming it up on his bicycle to the tune of "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," a scene that I was just embarrassed by the last time I saw it.

I had the same experience tonight watching Charade when Cary Grant was in the shower with his suit on.  I just can’t make the emotional or intellectual leap to go back to see that as funny.  It just looks stupid to me now, and unfortunately, that was my response to a lot of the humor in the movie.  I know the movie's supposed to be partly comedy and partly humor, but the humor part here just didn’t work for me.  I don’t think it’s the film’s fault because I think the movie falls pretty solidly into 60s convention.  It’s that I don’t find that kind of humor funny.  And for all that, I don't find poor Audrey Hepburn acting naïve or silly to be funny either.  And the timing of a lot of the humor isn’t funny today.  I could hardly even smile at the jokes about “agents” or “spies.”

Fortunately (because I WANT to like this movie), there are things here I can respond to.  The movie looks fabulous, for one!  It’s set in Paris in the 60s, and Paris looks great in film in the 60s.  Donen milks that beauty, shooting scenes in the Tuilleries and along the Seine.  And he’s working with Audrey Hepburn in Paris fashion; she’s the perfect visual complement to the city in her haute couture of the era.  She’s not great at comedy, but she knows how to wear designer clothes.  Other set design elements make the film worth looking at for me, too.  The great, empty Paris apartment that Regina returns to is pretty stunning, and the tense, closing pursuit through the theater is visual pleasure, too, as maniquins jump from shadows and chords dangle menacingly.  There is a lot to make this film worth watching.

There’s the very famous theme song, too, by Henry Mancini with Johnny Mercer lyrics.  It's a little overused in the film (for example, the version done in pipes for the carousel scene), but the musical theme is good listening and adds some cohesion to the film.

Charade works really well for me on the visual level, but I found the comedy/irony kept me from being as engaged by the thrill-plot as I might have been.  I wonder what Hitchcock could’ve done with this….