Thursday, September 30, 2010

Charade (1963)

I don't get to play charades much but when I do play with my family or friends, it's always an enjoyable evening as guests or family try to guess my acting out words or actions or famous people.  It's a light-hearted game that usually brings laughs and groans. But when looking at the deeper meaning of charade, it's a sad word. Charade means deception or fake.

CHARADE (1963) directed by Stanley Donen is pretending to be a Hitchcock thriller, a cinematic love letter to NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959). Although the plots are very different, both films have Cary Grant in the lead; a case of many mistaken identities; plenty of sexual innuendo between Grant and Audrey Hepburn; a trippy title sequence by Maurice Binder (who did many of the James Bond opening credits); and many moments of suspense. 

Donen had primarily made musicals like SINGING IN THE RAIN (1952) and  SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS (1954)) early in his career but in the 1960's he made two Hitchcock like thrillers with CHARADE and later ARABESQUE (1966) with Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren playing the Cary Grant/Eva Marie Saint type roles. CHARADE doesn't have the great subtext and set pieces Hitchcock's great string of films in the 1950's had but the screen play by Peter Stone is smart and confident and clever with plenty of red herrings. There's an interesting musical score by composer Henry Mancini (THE PINK PANTHER films and BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S). Besides the dream team of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, CHARADE showcases some supporting actors that would become very familiar to moviegoers for the next three decades - Walter Matthau, James Coburn, and George Kennedy. And did I mention the film is mostly filmed in Paris?


CHARADE revolves around the dead husband of Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) and the missing $250,000 he stole from the U.S. government and four war buddies in 1944 during World War II. Charles Lampert is murdered and thrown from a train in the first seconds of the film. At his wake in Paris, three of the men cheated out of their cut of the money show up to confirm Lampert is dead: the behemoth Herman Scobie (George Kennedy); the squirrely Leopold Gideon (Ned Glass); and the smooth-talking Tex Panthollow (James Coburn). They quickly turn their attention to Regina who they're convinced knows where the missing loot is.  Regina has a partial ally in the mysterious Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) who has taken a keen interest in her and her predicament. First, Peter shows up during her French Alps vacation. Later, he attends the wake as well. But is Peter's interest in Regina friendly or is he the fourth partner in crime looking for his share?

Regina receives a call from Hamilton Bartholomew (Walter Matthau) with the U.S. Embassy who discloses that her deceased husband was part of an OSS mission with four other men, ordered behind German lines to deliver $250,000 to the French Underground.  The men decide to steal the money from the U.S. government but their plans go awry when they're ambused by the Germans. Lampert escaped with the money and left the others to be caught or killed. Bartholomew, representing the U.S. government also wants the money back. And he warns Regina that the fourth man may be the one who killed her husband, a man called Carson Dial.

As the hunt for the missing quarter of a million dollars gets more intense, Regina begins to fall for Peter. But can she trust Peter?  Each time Peter is left with one of the three conspirators, they end up dead. Is Peter Carson Dial? CHARADE'S finale ends with a clever reveal of where the $250K is hidden and Regina being pursued into an empty Paris theater by the fourth man, Carson Dial.

It all sounds like pretty heavy stuff but director Donen keeps the style light and fun punctuated with brief episodes of violence. There's a scene in a Paris jazz club where Grant and Hepburn, getting to know each other, play a game where they have to exchange an orange from their neck to another patron's neck that is very avant garde and unusual. Grant has a few comic scenes that he pulls off with his usual expertise. CHARADE even has a French Police Inspector Edouard Grandpierre (Jacques Marin) who is a mixture of Clouseau and Hercule Poirot for some comic relief.

CHARADE is a great title for this thriller. Several characters are pretending to be people they really are not. Is Cary Grant in cahoots with the war veterans trying to recover their piece of the $250K or is he working on his own? Hepburn's dead husband turns out to be a former OSS agent, something he never told her. Even Hepburn's marriage was a charade as her dead husband turns out to be someone totally different than she thought.


As good a romantic lead as Cary Grant was, he does begin to show his age a little bit in CHARADE. I call it the Robert Redford syndrome where an actor who has played the handsome romantic lead for most of his career starts to look his age and still tries to play romantic roles with younger actresses. Redford tried it in HAVANA (1990) and INDECENT PROPOSAL (1993) and it didn't work.  Grant manages to pull it off with Hepburn and their age difference isn't too bothersome.  But Grant realized his romantic lead days were setting.  He made only two more films after CHARADE and retired from films in 1967. Grant and Hepburn have great chemistry which overcomes their age difference. For me, Audrey Hepburn is the female equivalent of Cary Grant - sophisticated, beautiful, and charming.

Director Donen sprinkles the film with Hitchcock references. Donen uses high angle shots throughout the film and the finale has Audrey Hepburn chased into an empty theater that echoes of THE 39 STEPS (1935) and THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1956). Even the motif of the wrong man that Hitchcock used over and over his flip flopped in CHARADE as it's the woman, in this case Hepburn's Regina, who is mistakenly implicated in her husband's chicanery.

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," English writer Charles Caleb Colton once said. Ultimately, CHARADE is much more than a Hitchcock imitation. While borrowing the style of the master of suspense, CHARADE stands on its own as a unique thriller starring two of Hollywood's reigning stars - Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932 and 1941 Versions)

For whatever reasons, author Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has never reached the dizzying heights of horror fame like Dracula or Frankenstein or the Wolfman.  The story of a good man who creates a devilish concoction that turns him into an evil man, Stevenson's DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE has appeared many times on stage and film and even cartoons.  Famed actor John Barrymore played the good doctor in a 1920 silent film version of the English classic.  Besides the two versions I will discuss, there have been many other versions of Stevenson's tale and some variations as well such as Hammer Films DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE (1971) in which Jekyll turns into a murderous woman (I haven't seen it yet so don't ask me how he accomplishes this ...yet!).  Julia Roberts played Jekyll's maid in MARY REILLY (1996) and most recently, Mr. Hyde appeared as a computer generated murderous behemoth in both THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN (2003 ) and VAN HELSING (2004).

My first encounter with Jekyll and Hyde was a Warners Bros Bugs Bunny cartoon as a kid called HYDE AND HARE. Bugs Bunny is taken home by Dr. Jekyll where Hyde/Jekyll and Bugs run amok. But why does Jekyll explore his dark side?  What makes him want to become such a vile and evil monstrosity?  I've never read Stevenson's story so with a recent DVD purchase of two DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE films (Paramount's 1932 version and MGM's 1941 version), I began my film research into the world of Jekyll and Hyde.


In the 1932 version, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, Dr. Jekyll (played by Fredric March) is an upscale English doctor who loves good music, fine art, and has dedicated his life to helping the afflicted and less fortunate citizens of London as a physician.  While giving a speech at what I assume is a medical school, Jekyll first reveals his interest in the two sides of man -- the good self and the bad self.  His goal is to separate evil from good. Jekyll's engaged to be married to Muriel Carew (Rose Hobart) but Muriel's father Brigadier-General Carew (Halliwell Hobbes) won't set a wedding date for the two love birds. Jekyll, a bit impatient that he can't be with the woman he loves sooner, goes out one night with his friend Dr. Lanyon (Holmes Herbert).  As they walk the streets of London, Jekyll rescues a beautiful, lower class music hall girl Ivy Pearson (Miriam Hopkins) from some roughnecks. Helping her back to her room, Jekyll finds himself attracted to the sexually provocative Ivy.

This chance encounter sets Jekyll off on discovering his alter ego -- his sadistic, sexual, animal side.  After hours upon hours in his laboratory, Jekyll drinks a serum that transforms him into the evil Mr. Hyde. Hyde tracks down Ivy in the music hall, terrorizing her, eventually almost imprisoning her in her own apartment.  Meanwhile, Brigadier-General Carew finally gives Jekyll and Muriel a date to be married.  Jekyll swears off Mr. Hyde for good but then Ivy comes to visit him, seeking help from her tormentor Mr. Hyde.  Jekyll promises Ivy she'll never see Hyde again.  But as Jekyll heads to his engagement party that night, he witnesses a violent encounter between a bird and a cat that triggers the transformation of Jekyll back into Hyde without Jekyll even drinking the serum.

Hyde returns to Ivy's apartment with deadly consequences.  Hyde is chased through the streets of London and back to his laboratory where he reveals his terrible secret to Dr. Lanyon.  Hyde is beginning to take over Jekyll.  When a visit to his fiancee Muriel triggers another change into Hyde and he nearly kills Muriel, Lanyon leads the police to Jekyll's residence where Hyde is shot and killed.

I loved the make-up decisions for this version. Fredric March's Mr. Hyde is very ape-like, almost a Neanderthal in top hat and cloak.  Hyde is a brute, a savage and March relishes the role.  Hyde is Jekyll's id, acting upon all the impulses good Victorian men restricted themselves from. It almost seems like Jekyll's sexual frustration from having to wait for permission to marry Mariel drives him to become Hyde. March would end up winning an Academy Award for his performance as Jekyll and Hyde.  Not until Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) would another horror performance win an Oscar.

For those expecting this 1932 version of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE to be tame, think again.  This film has more menacing violence and open sexuality then anything I had expected in a film from the 1930's. This version of JEKYLL AND HYDE is pre-code meaning it was able to get away with some images and themes that moral censors would soon clamp down on in future films. Miriam Hopkins oozes promiscuity as Ivy Pearson, exposing bare thigh and cleavage to Jekyll as he tends to her injury early in the film.  Jekyll and Ivy even kiss openly on her bed, usually taboo for films of this era.  Fredric March's Hyde torments Ivy both mentally and physically.  "I'm no gentleman," Hyde sneers at her.  Hyde's words hurt her almost as much as his actions.  Mr. Hyde reverberates in today's headlines as "good" husbands and boyfriends abuse women all over the world.


Director Rouben Mamoulian's film making style adds greatly to DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE.  Split screen and wipes are used extensively.  Mamoulian opens the film with a long POV (point of view) shot as Dr. Jekyll prepares to attend a party.  For a few minutes, we are Jekyll.  Mamoulian uses several different techniques for March's transformation from Jekyll to Hyde. The most clever is a filter done while filming that allows actor March to transform into Hyde right before our eyes.  It is startling metamorphosis.  Later, Mamoulian reverts to the time lapse change for Hyde that worked so well for Lon Chaney Jr as THE WOLFMAN.

The 1941 version of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE has a more famous cast and director and a bigger budget.  Spencer Tracy plays both Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  The stunning Lana Turner is Jekyll's fiancee now called Beatrix Emery and playing against type Ingrid Bergman is the bar girl Ivy Peterson (not Pearson like the first film). Directed by Victor Fleming (who directed THE WIZARD OF OZ and GONE WITH THE WIND both in 1939), this JEKYLL AND HYDE follows the 1932 version closely in some aspects and differs in others.

This version does a better job of showing Jekyll's scientific interest in the good and bad side of the human soul.  In the film's opening sequence, we see Jekyll take an interest in a parishioner at his church, injured in a work accident months earlier, exhibits wild behavior when before the accident he had been a loving husband. Director Fleming shows Hyde as a workaholic, already experimenting with animals as he tests serums that make a docile rabbit violent and back to being docile.  The medical establishment as well as Beatrix's stern father Sir Charles Emery (Donald Crisp) won't allow experiments on humans so Jekyll uses himself as a test case.


Tracy's Mr. Hyde make-up is more subtle than March's with just wild hair and thicker eyebrows doing most of the work.  Tracy uses his voice very well to create his own misogynistic Hyde. As he continues to change into Hyde, the make-up gets a little more elaborate.  This JEKYLL AND HYDE has some incredible Freudian dreamscapes during Jekyll's early transformations.  The most outrageous dream montage has Jekyll on a cart pulled by a white and black horse.  He whips furiously at them and the horses transform into the two women in his life - Beatrix (Turner) and Ivy (Bergman).  Another dream sequence has the sexually frustrated Jekyll uncorking Beatrice from a champagne bottle juxtaposed with images of waves crashing and fire billowing.

There's a nice dynamic in the triangle of Jekyll, Beatrix, and Beatrix's father Sir Charles.  Jekyll and Beatrix flirt and sneak kisses at every chance much to the consternation of Sir Charles played with great prudeness by Donald Crisp.  As he holds up their engagement and wedding plans, Sir Charles unwittingly drives Jekyll to cave in to his baser desires and urges, ultimately causing Jekyll to find within himself the terrible Mr. Hyde.

When we first meet Bergman's Ivy, Jekyll (Tracy) and his best friend Dr. John Lanyon (Ian Hunter) rescue her from a drunken thug. Bergman just didn't seem right for the part compared to Miriam Hopkins in the earlier version.  Bergman's Swedish accent is a bit too thick and she doesn't ooze sexiness.  But Bergman's perfomance grows on you. Tracy plays Jekyll a bit more as a charming rogue and sparks do fly when Ivy seduces Jekyll in her apartment.

It's easy to see why great actors like Fredric March or Spencer Tracy wanted to play Dr. Jekyll.  It's two roles in one with each character so vastly different than the other. Tracy's Jekyll is charismatic and sympathetic. His Hyde is chilling as he taunts and harasses waiters and patrons in his quest for Ivy, even bribing the owner of the Palace of Frivolities to fire Ivy so Hyde can control her.  "He ain't a man. He's the devil," Ivy tells Jekyll. Tracy and Bergman have some great scenes as Hyde and Ivy in her apartment and in one terrifying sequence, Hyde (Tracy) throws a bunch of grapes violently at Ivy's (Bergman) face, the fruit hitting her hard, bringing her to tears as he  proclaims, "The world is yours, darling...the moment is mine."  It's a shocking scene.


Director Fleming keeps the mood interesting with plenty of foggy London street sets and Jekyll's impressive laboratory. He's not quite the visionary that Moumalian was but the pace and style of his JEKYLL AND HYDE is comparable to the former.

I was thinking that Dr. Jekyll is a much braver scientist than Dr. Frankenstein in that Frankenstein experiments on dead bodies whereas Jekyll uses his body for his experiments.  Throughout film and pop culture, Jekyll and his alter ego Hyde will materialize in many forms. Comic book characters like Dr. Bruce Banner and his alter ego The Incredible Hulk or Peter Parker and his alter ego Spider Man owe some thanks to Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde.  Films like THE FLY (1958 or 1986) or ALTERED STATES (1980) take the Jekyll/Hyde formula to new levels as good men of science go awry with their experiments.

So which DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE is better?  I don't think you can go wrong by watching either one. The first version is a bit more raw and audacious.  The latter film is more slick with bigger stars. Both films have fine performances by all the actors.  So watch the newer version with Spencer Tracy or the older one with Fredric March, whichever one suits your fancy and mood.  Or better yet, be your own Jekyll and Hyde and watch them both.