Charade

I called the box-office at the RKO Keith Memorial Theatre and asked them to hold two complementary tickets for the Harvard CRIMSON reviewer. "We don't do that," the Lady said. "Let me talk to the manager," I said. "Listen," the manager said, "You want to review our moom pitcher, you pay to get in like anybody else. We don't care if the University reviews our pitchers or no." I'd been assigned, so we took a ride down to Boylston Street anyway.

The Keith, it turns out, charges an outrageous $1.80 a head. At those prices I choose my own entertainment, whisking journalistic integrity out through the trap door to my left. So, instead of this vista-vision gas, we took in Knife in the Water. This fact notwithstanding, I feel qualified to review Charade; qualified through prolonged exposure to its advertisements, through hearsay and deduction, and through time-worn familiarity with its principal players.

Lord, for years now I've been watching all the vital juices drain out of Cary Grant's face. In this latest, it must surely be genuine leather, its deep bronze tone accenting the skim-milk white of Audrey Hepburn's cheekbones. Audrey, (whose back may be old from her front by the position of her face and the direction her shoes are pointing) will pursue Cary avidly. But he will grant her nary a peck--contending she's young enough to be his granddaughter--until the last hundred feet of film, when he'll propose.

Surely, also, Audrey is provided with ample opportunities for her patented doe-eyed scream. Four graphic corpses, I am told, put in an appearance. The first (Audrey's hubby) is tossed battered from a speeding train. The second (a mountainous lummox with a hook where his right hand oughta be) we discover face up and fish lipped in an overflowing bathtub. Number three (a balding dry-goodsman from the Bronx or someplace) gets his throat most ostentatiously slashed in an early-morning elevator. The last is an evil-tempered Texan named, curiously enough, "Tex." Audrey finds him bound head to foot, his nostrils sucking in at a polyethylene laundry bag.

I'll wager that Audrey will mistakenly assume, silly thing, that Cary is the homicidal thief. There will be a long chase through the Paris Metro, which might prompt one to wonder how any healthy, adult male could fail to attain sufficient speed to catch frail Miss Hepburn clacking along in four-inch heels. In any case, it shall ultimately transpire that Cary is working for the govt. of the US of A (trying merely to repossess its rightful funds) and that the real killer is Audrey's trusted CIA agent, who isn't the CIA agent after all, but only borrowed his office while the fellow was out to lunch. I'd guess that in the climactic footage, Cary, enveloping his new fiancee in a protective embrace, advises his cronish secretary that the embassy building must be kept under closer surveillance during the luncheon hours.

Frankly, if my hunches are right, I cannot imagine anyone who has read this far shelling out $3.60 to view such incredible denounment. Especially since you now know who did it. Charade, beyond doubt, is just another futile Hollywood attempt to reproduce a giddy thriller of the William Powell-Myrna Loy-Asta Thin Man vintage.

Althought I haven't seen Charade, I have been to the RKO Keith. It is a very big, very ugly theatre patronized by the Medicare crowd (large groups of garrulous old ladies who perpetually explicate the action for one another--e.g. "Oooh, now he's holding her hand."--and the clusters of teenage couples playing kissy-face and huggy-bear.