Charade (Donen, 1963) celebrates its 50th
Anniversary this week,
and over the
years, it has earned a reputation, oft-repeated, as “the best Hitchcock film
Hitchcock never made.” Now, I love
Charade, and not just because it’s the best postage stamp film ever. It’s
an irresistibly entertaining comedy-thriller, with wonderful Paris locations,
great lines of dialogue, and a fizzy, playful tone, all fueled by incredible
chemistry between Cary Grant & Audrey Hepburn (their only film
together).
But I’ve
always hated that Hitchcock meme because it shows a fundamental failure to
understand what the great Sir Alfred was all about. For while Charade is enormous fun, it really
isn’t about anything except thrills and laughs and clever reversals. And while Hitch certainly employed all those
things, he was far more reflective, and far more subversive. His is the cinema of sex and psychology, of
paranoia and pursuit, of fever dreams and salient nightmares. His humor was darker, his action laced with
malevolence. He showed a real fear of
institutions and a suspicion of normalcy, with his characters regularly haunted
and hounded out of their routines.
Hitch lived
with the moniker “The Master of Suspense”, which often served as a back-handed
compliment, since it appreciated his technical craft while also relegating him
to a genre hack, a niche and unserious talent.
He certainly made worse films than Charade, but I’m hard-pressed to
think of many that were as lightweight.
Charade is a delicious soufflé. But
Hitch was filet mignon. So “the best
Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made” should reflect his artistry and pathology,
not just his deceptive smoke & mirrors.
Something by Chabrol, perhaps. Or
Polanski or Suzuki.
But we’re
here about stamps, and the statute of limitations on spoilers is why I can call this marvelous confection the greatest postage stamp movie in history—because the big
twist of the film is the fact that postage stamps play an important role at
all.
Throughout the film, the key
characters, good and bad, are looking for a missing $250,000 and the only clues
to its whereabouts are the contents of a travel bag, which are itemized several
times in the film
Police inspector: “One wallet, containing four thousand
francs; one agenda...; one ticket of passage to South America; one letter,
stamped but unsealed...; one key, to your apartment; one comb; one fountain
pen; one toothbrush; one tin of tooth powder.
That is all.”
Of course, we eventually learn that the envelope actually
contains three incredibly rare and valuable stamps, a discreet and portable way
to move the fortune.
I won’t discuss the
specifics around the stamps in question (which were conceived especially for the movie),
primarily because I couldn’t do it any better than
this detailed and illuminating blog post about philatelic values and the real-life counterparts
to this narrative McGuffin.
Definitely check
it out.
But the movie is very clever about disguising what is
ultimately a preposterous resolution.
Early in the film, our damsel in distress Reggie (Hepburn) has
the following chat with Jean-Louis, the young son of her friend Sylvie:
JL: When you get your divorce, are you going back to America?
R: Well, don’t you want me to stay?
JL: Yes, of course, but if you went back and then wrote me a letter...
R: ...You could have the stamps!
I’ll get you some here, ok?
JL: OK
This is before she learns her husband is dead or about the
money and the bag, and it’s a throwaway exchange but a nice way to seed the
idea of stamps being important later on when Jean-Louis goes to the stamp mart
(which is obliquely mentioned in the agenda).
Similarly, the film is coy about how it shows the envelope,
mixing it in among the other assorted items and, when more closely inventoried
by Reggie and her mysterious ally (Cary Grant), dismissed quickly out of
hand. More emphasis is placed on the
contents of the envelope, an innocuous letter to her, than the envelope
itself—a sly little head fake by screenwriter Peter Stone. We only get two brief looks at the stamps
before the big reveal, one when baddies James Coburn & Ned Glass examine the bag's contents, and another when Audrey & Cary revisit the clues.
"Everybody
and his Aunt Lillian’s been through that bag, including me...I’ve been into it
at least once a day. Somebody would have
seen it."
"It’s there,
Reggie. We’re looking at it right
now. Something on that bed is worth a
quarter of a million dollars."
Of course,
it defies credulity that the French police, a member of the US treasury
department, and 3 criminals (not to mention our heroine) would not notice that
something was unusual about 3 stamps on a single envelope for a domestic
mailing, or that none of the stamps are French and all are from different
countries! But that’s the genius of a
McGuffin, which is simply a vehicle to keep the plot moving. And one of the beauties of Charade is that it has terrific pacing while also allowing lots of room to let the romance breathe. It’s also a very funny movie without ever losing its sense
of genuine menace, and Cary’s allegiances are always jumping back and forth
(hero or villain?) believably. And of
course, the stamps are a great 11th-hour twist, but not the only one.
So
approaching the climax, the final entry in her husband’s agenda brings Cary
& Audrey to the Jardin des Champs Elysees.
They don’t know what they’re looking for so they split up and Cary
tails the last remaining heavy, Tex (Coburn) as he wanders among a
cluster of vending stalls. Suddenly, both he and Tex have a wordless epiphany, punctuated by
lots of quick close-ups of stamps.
As they both
return to grab the stamps from the travel bag, we return to Audrey still at the
garden, who runs into Sylvie.
R: Sylvie! What
are you doing here?
S: I’m waiting
for Jean-Louis.
R: Oh, what’s
he up to?
S: He was so
excited when he got the stamps you gave him this morning. He said he’d never seen any like them.
R: I’m
glad. What’s all this?
S: The stamp
market. It’s there every Thursday
afternoon. That’s where Jean-Louis
trades his stamps.
R: Good Lord,
where is he?
S: What’s the
matter, Cherie?
R: The
stamps! They’re worth a fortune!
Having gone to quite a number of
philatelic conventions in my time, all the production design and displays in
this sequence are very convincing, so I suspect the stamp mart is a real thing (though one I've never sought out in the 3 times I've traveled to Paris).
When they
finally find Jean-Louis, it’s too late:
R:
(taking a bag of stamps from him): What’s this?
JL: A man gave
me all those for only three.
The vendor has closed his stall, so they find him in what appears to be his home (with philatelic items scattered everywhere)
Stamp Vendor: I was
expecting you. I know you would
come. Look at them, madame. Have you ever in your entire life seen
anything so beautiful?
Reggie: I’m sorry, I
don’t know anything about stamps.
SV: I know them
as one knows his own face, though I had never seen them. This one, a Swedish four shilling called Da
Gula Fyraskillingen, printed in 1854.
R: What is it
worth?
SV: Oh, the
money is unimportant.
R: I’m afraid
it’s very important.
SV: Well, in
your money, perhaps $85,000.
R: And the blue
one?
SV: Oh, it’s
called the Hawaiian Blue. In 1894, the
owner was murdered by a rival collector who was obsessed to own it.
R: And what is its value today?
SV: $65,000.
SV: Ah, the best
for last. Le chef d’oeuvre de la
collection. The masterpiece. The most valuable stamp in the world. It’s called the Gazette Maldave. It was printed by hand on colored paper and
marked with the initials of the printer.
Today, it has a value of $100,000.
I’m not a thief, madame. I knew
there was some mistake.
R:
You gave the boy a great
many stamps in return. Are they for sale
now?
SV: Let me see,
350 European, 200 Asian, 175 American, 100 African and 12 Princess Grace
commemorative. Which comes to 10 Francs. And don’t forget these. (hands her the stamps
from the envelope)
R: Thank
you. I’m sorry.
SV: Oh, no. For a few minutes they were mine. That is enough.
I’ve always
loved this exchange for a number of reasons.
It shows a stamp enthusiast who is passionate and learned, but also has
enormous integrity. It views stamp
collecting as a portal into history, intrigue, and craftsmanship. And the cheap bag of stamps is a very
familiar fixture at stamp stores, showing that it’s a hobby that’s accessible
to even the most modest amateur and not just a pastime for the effete and
elite.
One other thing about the value of the stamps (beyond what the link above breaks down): Nothing is said about how sticking the stamps on the envelope potentially devalued them. $250K may be the cumulative sales price, but would the US be able to recoup the money now that the stamps are affixed to something? Or will some intern have to soak the envelope in water to slide the stamps off and allow them to carefully dry separately again?
Some other details: The stamp vendor mentions
a Princess Grace commemorative stamp, and in the stamp montage, you can
actually see one (from Monaco). Other
stamps on display include pictures of Lincoln & FDR, Charles De Gaulle
& Louis XIV, and the 1960 Winter Olympics (in Squaw Valley, CA). No US stamps are depicted, but there are ones from France, the Congo, Madagascar, French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa. Incredibly, on display is even one stamp I’ve
used in my own hobbying, an Eiffel Tower stamp from 1939, which I used to
supplement this one-sheet for The Lavender Hill Mob (which is also one of Audrey
Hepburn’s earliest film appearances).
Another
thing I love about Charade is that it’s a film that loves the City of Lights
without indulging in the stereotypical Paris porn like so many American movies
do (Exhibit A: Donen & Hepburn’s previous collaboration, the musical Funny
Face). There's some wonderful Parisian street scenes and plenty of atmosphere without relying on the cliche locations. Even when it does feature a
tourist spot like Notre Dame (also visible in that stamp screen shot), it’s as
a self-referential joke.
Donen is one
of my favorite directors and has always had a wonderful eye for movement in his
legendary musicals, and that skillset serves him well here, in a thrilling
rooftop fight between Cary and a hook-handed George Kennedy, and also in the
climax under the stage of the Comédie-Française, a masterclass sequence of using sound and
movement to enhance suspense. All before that final surprise happy ending, and Cary's last line of the film: "Well, before
we start that, may I have the stamps?"
Donen
doesn’t have a stamp (yet), but Cary & Audrey both do. They are Scott # 3692 and 3786
respectively. The flavorful score is by
Henry Mancini, whose stamp is Scott # 3839 (Charade is even mentioned on the stamp
itself). All 3 postmarks are on the reverse side of my one-sheet postcard that opened this article. The Hitchcock stamp from the
Legends of Hollywood series Is # 3226 and the one from the Golden Age of
Television is # 4414o . Obi-Wan Kenobi is Scott # 4143i from the Star Wars issue.