I’ve run out of available, good, older TV series for now, so I thought it might be fun to check out some older films that I’ve enjoyed for a while. First up is Charade, a 1963 “romantic comedy mystery film” that’s not only great, it’s available entirely for free because they messed up the copyright (more on that later).

Charade follows a woman (played by Audrey Hepburn) as she unravels the mystery of her husband’s murder and a mysterious man (played by Cary Grant) who tries to help her. The quick whit and improvisation talents of Hepburn and Grant are on fully display here, it’s electric. Sometimes it feels like a scene will never end, and you won’t want it to either. And the score by Henry Mancini is captivating. It’s really hard to describe this film, but I’d suppose I’d say that the feel of classic James Bond is combined with the whit of Spider-Man, and it’s all wrapped in a charming love story. So now you’ll have to see it and provide me with a better short description.

Speaking of seeing it, this film came out at a time when including “Copyright”, “Copr.”, or the symbol “©” with the title was still required by law, and apparently someone forgot to do that. This means that the film immediately entered the public domain upon release. Oops. That may not have been great news for producer/director Stanley Donen, but it’s great news for us, because now you can stream and download Charade for free from The Internet Archive and stream it for free on Shout! Factory TV!

Charade is a crazy fun romp, and definitely one of my favorite films. It’s a collection of things that really should have never gone together, but somehow it made them work and still managed to exceed expectations. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!