Peter Joshua, a charming stranger in Paris, helps a widow who has inherited a fortune — and a set of dangerous enemies who want it back.
In Charade (1963), directed by Stanley Donen, Cary Grant plays Peter Joshua, a man Regina Lampert, played by Audrey Hepburn, meets on holiday in Paris. When Regina returns home, she learns that her husband has been murdered and that a large sum of money, stolen during the Second World War, is missing. Three men, all former associates of her husband, believe Regina knows where the money is, and Peter may be the only person she can trust — or the most dangerous of them all.
Grant, at 59, is still effortlessly suave, and his pairing with Hepburn is one of the film’s great pleasures. Charade mixes comedy, romance and suspense with a lightness that has earned it the nickname of the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made. Grant plays Peter with a series of different identities, and he keeps the audience guessing about which one, if any, is true.
Charade was one of Grant’s last major films, and it shows him at the height of his powers: funny, romantic, and completely in control of a story that twists until its final moments.