Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade
While there is much to love about Stanley Donen’s romantic thriller, Michaela Owens tucks into one specific aspect that makes Audrey Hepburn’s character so entertaining.
Reggie Lampert is terrified. Her husband, Charlie, has been murdered. A trio of dastardly men are after the $250,000 he stole from them, one of whom has just cornered her in a telephone booth and tossed lit matches at her to make it crystal clear they’ll do anything to get their loot. A mysterious stranger has magically appeared to help her, but — just like her no-good husband — he may not be what he seems. Her vast apartment has been cleaned out and she’s been forced to move into a small, dingy, and incredibly beige hotel. All of this would drive anyone to the brink, but Reggie has a plan, a surefire way to survive these insane circumstances she has suddenly found herself in: food.
From the very first moment we’re introduced to Charade‘s Reggie, scarfing down bread as she contemplates divorcing Charlie, we know her relationship to food. Dubbed her “favorite activity” in Peter Stone’s screenplay, eating is how our heroine self-soothes, a fact that irritates her best friend Sylvie, who certainly speaks for the audience when she sighs, “It is infuriating that your unhappiness does not turn to fat!” Whether tearing open a lollipop with trembling hands after her phone booth encounter or ordering soup in the middle of an intense conversation with Walter Matthau’s CIA bureaucrat or even comparing a filtered cigarette to “drinking coffee through a veil,” Reggie’s obsession with food is not only a relatable quirk, it’s a hook into her character that elucidates Audrey Hepburn’s nuances and charm to reveal a performance of both adorable goofiness and surprising substance.
Hepburn’s underrated comedic skills bring a freshness to Charade that perfectly matches the levity and warmth provided by her leading man, Cary Grant, and director Stanley Donen. Reggie’s Brad Pitt-level of noshing coupled with Hepburn’s subtle movements and inimitable voice inspire many unforgettable bits of physical comedy and line readings, like the way she picks a chicken sandwich with a hushed urgency that makes her eyes widen or her hilariously misguided idea that Charlie’s tooth powder might be heroin if they taste it. Food isn’t just sustenance for Reggie, it’s how she slows down and digests whatever life has thrown at her (including but not limited to lit matches) — after all, it’s hard to stay terrorized when you’re polishing off an ice cream cone. Her love for food is also reflected in her pursuit of Grant’s Peter Joshua, her sexual appetite another emotional barometer, as exemplified when Peter finally admits he returns her feelings and she immediately stops piling food onto her plate, noting, “I’m not hungry anymore, isn’t it glorious?”
Throughout Charade, Reggie’s fortitude and quick thinking are tested at every turn, and yet, buoyed by her insatiable curiosity and open-hearted honesty, she still emerges a victor, one who more than deserves her prize of the delicious Cary Grant.
Charade will be screened at IU Cinema on September 21 as part of the series Everyone Wants to Be Cary Grant. A Q&A on film scoring and Henry Mancini will follow the screening.