"Oh," the film director Jonathan Demme says airily, "the word 're-make' is so crude. Why, I've done something so much more ambitious: It's a reinvention, a reincarnation, a reimagining, a - "But then he pauses and laughs. It's all a setup. He's too smart to play the pompous director except as a comic riff.

"Of course, the fact is, we did re-make it!" he says, putting a brutal underlining on the word as if to sum up, and glory in, the vulgar power of his version of Stanley Donen's fabulous Charade (1963), which opens tomorrow under the title The Truth About Charlie.

Is there anyone out there who doesn't love Charade? You, the guy who raised your hand, and you, madam, who made a prune face, please leave now. You have just been kicked out of my article on Jonathan Demme. Charade featured Movieworld's two most incandescent charmers, Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, and their chemistry reached the level of fusion. If you don't love them, I'm going to be angry. Really, this may get ugly. Charade also featured super character actors of the soon-to-be-star category: James Coburn, George Kennedy, Walter Matthau. And a brilliantly clever plot. It was Donen's Singin' in the Rain without rain or singing or Gene Kelly but just as charming, just as entertaining.

"I hope we remain close in spirit," Demme says, "but in many ways we departed radically from the original."

These days the word "re-make" carries a certain stench of commercial desperation. You wouldn't think an Academy Award winner like Demme (for The Silence of the Lambs), long a critic's darling and proprietor of a genuine A-project career, would slip to a level so close to bottom-feeding, so close to hackdom. After all, he has a reputation to preserve.

But also, it seems, he has a mind to preserve.

"The last three films were very intense experiences," Demme explains. He's referring to The Silence of the Lambs, about a serial killer; Philadelphia, about discrimination against a man with AIDS; and Beloved, about the psychological effects of slavery. "They stayed with me.

"For me, the material in Charlie offered a viable opportunity because of its fun qualities rather than its extreme qualities. I remembered the original as the most sophisticated movie I'd ever seen; it even made me feel sophisticated. So I thought the script would be a phone-in and I could just copy it. That was my first impulse: to copy."

It didn't work out that way, says Demme, 58, who is a live-wire type, completely removed from the imperial-director concept, an extremely friendly, eager, decent guy.

"Then I realized I couldn't copy it. I understood that I had my work to do. This would be a paraphrase of the original.

"So I looked for ways to make it mine. One way was through Paris, which is a great city. But I decided to feature the diversity of the new Paris - that is, to capitalize on the old values of Paris, the old views and scenes, but to open them up."

Thus Demme's Paris isn't the enchanted, mythic Paris of Charade. It's rawer, rougher, filled with a wider variety of people.

You may prefer the old Paris, as is your choice; but this is the Paris that Demme decided to portray.

The original, of course, featured Hepburn as a recent widow, still mourning the death of her handsome, savvy art-dealer husband. In the weeks after his death, a number of people approach her, search her apartment, put pressure on her to find something she doesn't even believe she has. She realizes that her husband wasn't who she thought - that he may, in fact, have been a criminal. Her main tormentor is Grant, who keeps turning up, pressuring her - and flirting with her. It complicates matters that she is attracted to him and not to the stuffy State Department official, played by Matthau, who seems to be her protector.

"I very much wanted to capture the spirit of the film Charade, but I didn't think it was possible to recapture the magic of Grant and Hepburn," Demme says. "The studio wanted George Clooney in the lead, because he's physically the closest to Grant working today. I'm not going to enter in the Cary Grant sweepstakes. Nobody was Cary Grant. Cary Grant wasn't even Cary Grant. Instead, I decided to cast the anti-Cary Grant."

Namely, Mark Wahlberg.

"By so obviously trying not to emulate him," Demme says, "we were to be liberated." That was the theory, anyway. Whether it turns out to be true will depend on American audiences, many of whom by this time don't know who Cary Grant was and think that Mark Wahlberg is very cool.

In any case, few will be disappointed in Thandie Newton in the Hepburn role. The young Afro-British actress has exactly Hepburn's gamine charm, her off-centeredness - but unlike Hepburn, she's also hot. Who could not love her? Demme clearly does, as this is his second go-round with her. (Newton appeared in Beloved.)

"She's a full-immersion actress," he says. "To watch her throw herself into a role is really something."

That prompts a disquisition on movie actors, for he's had a great run of luck with them. Two - Jodie Foster in Lambs and Tom Hanks in Philadelphia - have won Oscars under his guidance.

"I have a gift of wisdom to work hand in hand with great actors who take full responsibility for their character," Demme says. "I need actors who inhabit their characters. Under those circumstances, I can be helpful."

Asked how he sees his role as a director, he says, modestly enough: "I see myself as a gatherer of people who are far more gifted. I'm like the audience representative. I think I have the gift of appreciation. I can't do anyone else's job. But I can appreciate it. I'm nurturing, supportive, adoring. I'm not a general, I'm a channeler. I get everybody's work into just the right blend."

His reputation for humane films, full of the foibles and pleasures of real life, comes from a specific source: himself.

"I'm a very corny person. I'm a people person. I have a tremendous respect for how hard it is to keep it together in this country. I love people who work. It's a respect I have for American people - it's as sappy as that."

Here Demme invokes one of his early triumphs, Melvin and Howard (1980), the fanciful tale of an ordinary schnook named Melvin Dummar and his chance encounter with a man who seems to be Howard Hughes.

"I'm as impressed by Melvin as I am by Howard," Demme says. "Melvin is my idea of a superhero. To me, hard workers are the greatest heroes."