Charade

Charade (dir. Stanley Donen, 1963)
Watershed, 1 Canons Road, Harbourside, Bristol BS1 5TX
Tuesday 19 December 2023, 18:00 GMT

Running Time: 109 mins; Rating: PG

THIS EVENT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED

“The best Alfred Hitchcock thriller Hitchcock didn’t make”.

We are delighted to be partnering once again with the Watershed, who we’ve been working with since 2014 when the festival first started!

A globetrotting caper that prizes its idiosyncratic pieces over the general puzzle, Charade is a delightful romp with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn’s sparkling chemistry at the centre of some perfectly orchestrated mayhem. A trio of crooks relentlessly pursue a young American, played by Audrey Hepburn in gorgeous Givenchy, through Paris in an attempt to recover the fortune her dead husband stole from them. The only person she can trust is Cary Grant’s suave, mysterious stranger. Director Stanley Donen goes deliciously dark for Charade, a glittering emblem of sixties style and macabre wit. With an introduction by festival director Dr Charlotte Crofts (UWE Professor of Cinema Arts).

When Reggie Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) finds her husband murdered for his part in a WWII gold heist, Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) steps in to help her solve the crime, protecting her after three of her husband’s accomplices harass her at the funeral. Reggie is caught up in a web of suspense as she is pursued by the shadowy trio, who think she knows where the money is hidden. The only person she thinks she can trust is Joshua, who confesses that he is actually Alexander Dyle, brother of a fourth accomplice in the theft. Then it emerges that the fourth accomplice had no brother, and Joshua/Dyle admits that he is, in fact, a crook named Adam Canfield. Now Reggie doesn’t know where to turn… suspense, romance and Paris!

Part of the Watershed’s ‘Color by Technicolor’ season.

“The best Alfred Hitchcock thriller Hitchcock didn’t make”.

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