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**A Minor Spoiler or Two**
The plot is both typical and, especially because of the 31-year age difference between Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn, rather unconvincing. There is really no particular romantic chemistry between the two. The songs, including Gershwin’s “S Wonderful,” are mostly good and mostly well performed. It’s great to hear Hepburn’s own voice...as opposed to the songs in My Fair Lady where she is dubbed over. She has a delightfully warm voice and simple, sweet style that, together with the choreography, make “How Long Has This Been Going On?” one of the highest high points of the film. Anyone who loves Audrey will adore this.
So then, let’s talk about choreography. Stanley Donen was not just a director, he was also a choreographer who directed both musicals and non-musicals. If you watch this film carefully, you will see that every scene is either formally or informally choregraphed. In fact, for me, this film is all about movement. This theme is integral to every scene...and underscores the subject matter of haute couture. The first thing we see after the high fashion credits is Maggie Prescott (played by Kay Thompson), editor of the fashion magazine Quality, marching into her place of business and into the middle door of seven doors. Then she summons her entirely female staff on the intercom and they all come striding out of their respective, differently colored doors and through her larger (red) door like a flock of business birds. Maggie has decided that the coming issue lacks “bizazz” (pizazz) and then goes into the movie’s first song-and-dance number “Think Pink,” in which various pink-clad athletically active models run or dive or swing into the scene. The athletes, in a way somewhat reminiscent of Busby Berkeley, freeze into static images of themselves. Then come sumptuous-gowned models moving in slightly slowed down motion together with bouncing balloons and flowing streamers. In this way, the theme of movement is presented to the eye at the very beginning.
Movement, of course, means moving from one place to another. In other words, movement involves choices or at least possibilities. The seven doors at Quality are later reflected in the triply split screen in the “Bonjour, Paris!” number. Hepburn, Astaire, and Thompson arrive in Paris and all claim to be tired and headed for a nap...though all three end up striding and twirling and singing through the streets of Paris. The screen is split vertically into three images of each of the characters as they sing as if together in one number. This triple screen, which was both highly innovative and also must have been literally enormously expressive on the gigantic Vista Vision screens of the ‘50s, reflects the row of doors at the beginning of the movie. The three characters have moved away from their stated intentions into new possibilities. I’ll follow up this one motif of how movement opens up possibilities. In the first scene at the wedding chapel, when Astaire and Hepburn dance right out onto a kind of raft, they float from right to left from one shore to the next. They are falling in love and thus crossing from an old shore to a new one. In the final, culminating scene, however, when they again dance onto the raft, they end up floating off into the distance. This symbolizes the choice of commitment.
I advise the viewer to see Funny Face as a big ballet, an excursus on the possibilities and implications of motion. Fashion, too is about motion. Even off the runway, all posing is done with motion. In the famous fashion photography scene in the streets of Paris, Jo Stockton (Hepburn) at first has to learn how to find context and motivation for her poses. Quickly, though, she learns that posing is all about learning how to move. Eventually, in the scene with Winged Victory and the red gown and wrap (reflecting the shape of the statue), she is teaching the photographer how to keep up with her improvised movements. She is evolving through movement. This is really why she begins to love not only Dick Avery (Astaire) but also the world of fashion. Even when she is merely walking down the fashion runway, the viewer will notice that she is taking ballet steps. It's worth noting here that both Astaire and Hepburn spent hours a day practicing moving and that this is one of the main factors that make this film look exquisite.
I could go on writing, for example, about the meaning freedom expressed by how Hepburn handles the hat in “How Long Has This Been Going On?” or how her dance in the beatnik café signals an important (but not final) stage in her quest for independence, but why spoil the viewer’s pleasure of finding for him or herself the meanings of movement in this wonderful film? In short, despite a flawed script, Stanley Donen, in collaboration with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn came up with a cinematic, of not dramatic, masterpiece. The Blu-ray version is clear and sumptuous, doing justice to that wonderful ‘50s Technicolor.
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