Charade

This is an elegant and very professional film made by Mr. and Mrs.James Mason with themselves acting (together with others) in three very different stories, one involving a heinous murder, the other (the most interesting one) made on a story by Alexander Dumas about Austrian military discipline and code of honour put to the severest possible test, and the third being a comedy about a workaholic business man. The dialogue is extremely sharp and pregnant all the way, so that it's difficult sometime to keep pace with the intelligence, but above all it's great entertainment. It is very akin to the three films made on Somerset Maugham's short stories a few years earlier, Trio, Quartet and Encore, it's the same kind of sustained story-tettling with intensive dialogue and action, so this is a film you undoubtedly will return to some day.for refreshment of your intelligence.

If you're wondering the Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn film Charade is not a remake of this. This Charade is a collection of three short stories where would be film producer James Mason and his Pamela Mason discuss some film projects and they are short stories she's written and filed away in a trunk. Some of them should have stayed there.

The Masons play the leads in all three stories. Of the three the best was the second where Mason who is a crack duelist is goaded into a duel by Scott Forbes over Pamela Mason. Only Forbes has a diabolical scheme in mind since as the challenged party Forbes gets to choose, time, place, and method.

The other two are of lesser quality, but they do show that James Mason was an actor of great versatility. Like I didn't already know that, still this is within a less than 90 minute time frame.

Mason didn't think much of it according to the Citadel Film Series book on his career. But I rather liked the second story and he underrated himself here.

When I saw that James Mason was both starring in and producing Charade I was very interested to check it out. It was interesting in that his wife was the female lead playing opposite him throughout all three shot films. I really wanted to like Charade, and I did to a certain degree, but generally speaking it was a rather disappointing viewing experience. For starters I felt that Pamela Mason has a limited acting range and was not able to convincingly adapt her talents to all three of the short films showcased here. She wasn't bad, but for me she was a weak link overall. Still, it was kind of interesting and if you're curious then check it out and see what you think.

I bought a video of this Charade months ago and was almost afraid to watch it after reading Sheridan Morley's comments about it in the biography he wrote about James Mason. (If Morley's account of Mason's life is to be believed, he threw opportunity for real Hollywood stardom away with both hands.) I was pleasantly surprised as it was a delightful film, perfect for the small screen. The stories were charmingly portrayed, the acting was fine, but I doubt Pamela would have had much of an acting career without James' coattails to ride on. I actually liked the last story the best. James as Jeeves was particularly funny to me. You could see him switch gears and Viola - there was Diello from Five Fingers.

Having said that, it is clear to me that James and Pamela really had a desire to be creative above any desire for James to be a Hollywood star. One of their early efforts was an independent film James and Pamela wrote, produced (with her ex-husband, Roy Kellino), starred in and distributed. It's called "I Met A Murderer" and despite the hokey title, it's very good.

I have to admit that i thought this was the classic charade movie when i watch and i expected some great twist at the end or somewhat of a clever ending , instead i got lose my 1 1/2 hours of my life , so this movie was not in any way of a thriller but a mixture of three movies told without any certain objective , i am not saying that this is the worst movie i have ever seen (i have seen a lot of movies) but it was a very boring experience among the three stories the middle one was somewhat entertaining anyway i would not recommend you watching this movie it was that much of disappointing , sorry for my bad English and thank you for reading my review