Golden Age Comedy Hall of Fame (1952-1976)

Director/Producer Stanley Donen...now that's a name cinema fans should know. Before he became a director Donen was an accomplished choreographer working on top level musicals for over 10 years. That impeccable sense of rhythm and timing is a trait of great choreographers, and it translates into one very skilled director.

Stanley Donen's Charade is near perfection. The film flows from act to act and scene to scene. Part of the perfection is the brilliant casting, topped off by one of the most charming actresses to grace the silver screen, Audrey Hepburn. One never gets a sense that she's acting as she's so natural and down to earth, that she seems like someone we might know in real life. There's an old saying about actors that's still true today, 'dying is easy, comedy is hard!' It takes a special talent to make comedy and romance come through the screen in a believable way. Audrey does that with so much ease that one forgets they're watching a movie.

Cary Grant had that easiness about him too. He's funny because he doesn't even try. It's his straight face delivery of funny lines that makes this and many of his other films classics. The few times he strays from that, tried and true straight comedy delivery, it doesn't work. The shower scene where he decides to take a shower in his suit, as he hams it up...is the only scene that didn't work for me.

For the rest of the cast, all I can say is what a good bunch of baddies! Is there anybody more brutish than George Kennedy or James Coburn, and along with the little guy in the glasses they make for a good counter balance to the effervescence of Audrey.

Charade came out of a unique time period at the height of the cold war and the Cuban Missile Crisis was in full swing during production. This cold war tension then launched a spree of spy thriller movies. Charade is one of the best of the bunch for it's effortless balancing of thriller-romance-drama-comedy elements all with wit and charm.

I'm going to agree with @GulfportDoc on this one...nothing worked in this hot mess. For starters I didn't find anything even remotely funny. The first 20 minutes of screaming between Dick Van Dyke and his neurotic flake of a wife Debbie Reynolds, was grating on my nerves! And remarkable all that screaming didn't tell me a damn thing about the problems in their marriage. Nor did it give me any insight into the then current trend of divorce. That's poor writing, as all we get is filler dialogue and all of it shouted too. I guess the surly house keeper with the cig butt hanging out of her mouth was suppose to be comic effect. Well how about making her an integral part of the household where she's the only one who can see the truth. Or just do something interesting with her.

After the screaming of the first act, did the film finally find it's footing? Nope, it continues on with scenes that take forever to get to the punchline. Prime example is the tedious kids-in-the-park scene with Tom Bosley. Within in the first 15 seconds I got the joke...the kids all belong to different past marriages and everyone is divorced or remarried again and again and again! The scene must have went on for 5 minutes until we get the one forgotten kid left standing alone in the park. Oh boy, that was a long ways for a little joke.


And what the heck was the tacked on hypnosis lounge act scene about? And could that scene be milked any more or be any more inane? Talk about lazy writing. You know a movie is bad when Lee Grant is the best thing in it

I've always enjoyed British films with Charles Laughton zestfully playing colorful characters, set in the 19th century, England. I loved the way Hobson's Choice created this unique microcosm world and made it so believable. We don't see much of the countryside around Salford Lancashire. But what we do see gives the movie a feeling of wet cobblestone and dimly let shops, where people work long and hard for a living. Around the bend, so to speak, is the industrial center of the city boarded by the river Irwell.

Damn...that's a real river too and it's so heavily polluted that in the background you can see foam spray rising from the currents, like a dirty bubble bath. Behind the river are smoke stacks and heavy industry that pour their pollutants into the dead river. Wow, what a place for a pair of lovers to stroll too. Yes, the dirty river isn't what the film is about but the choice of shooting scenes through the entire movie set the emotions and feel of the film.

Laughton once again is literally larger than life and the film is made more special because of his presences. Only Laughton could be so overbearing in a film and yet still invoke the needed sympathy.

The drunken moon chaser scene is a gem. Probably that credit should go mostly to David Lean, though it's Laughton stomping in the puddles in the most humorous way imaginable.

My favorite though was Brenda de Banzie as Maggie the oldest daughter. She's a spinster at 30, according to the times. Her father doesn't want her to marry, so he can keep her as a built in shop keep, maid and cook. At first Maggie seems just stern. Then we see she's driven. Then we discover her cleverness as she marries the shop's boot maker played wonderful by John Mills. It's this marriage that allows the actress to show another unexpected emotion, pride and love for her new husband. It's that support and belief that rises the boot maker from a babbling nobody to a self made man with respect for himself.

John Mills, Brenda de Banzie and Charles Laughton make the story special. David Lean too. Wonderful movie.