Audrey Hepburn: An Intimate Portrait (23 page)

“I
remember he was wearing a yellow shirt, gray flannel, a red scarf knotted
around his waist instead of a belt, and the famous feet were clad in soft
moccasins and pink socks. He was also wearing that irresistible smile.

One
look at this most debonair, elegant, and distinguished of legends and I could
feel myself turn to solid lead. My heart sank into my two left feet.

“Then
suddenly I felt a hand around my waist and, with his inimitable grace and
lightness, Fred literally swept me off my feet. [Astaire has been quoted as
saying that Audrey was shaking so much, he didn’t have a choice.] I experienced
the thrill that all women at some point in their lives have dreamed of—to
dance just once with Fred Astaire.”

Astaire,
a notorious perfectionist, was gentle with Audrey because he knew that
enthusiasm would win more hard work from her than criticism. He also was well
aware of her burgeoning popularity and didn’t want to risk losing her due to
her insecurities. Lastly, he sensed his own days as a leading song-and-dance
man coming to an end. He was fifty-seven when filming began (Audrey was thirty
years his junior) and he wanted the final years of his career to be as
stress-free as possible.

The
Funny Face
plot is simple, if a
little simpleminded. A satire that pokes fun at the world of intellectual
pursuits as well as the emptiness of the fashion industry, its story line
incorporates both.

Magazine
editor Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson), based on
Vogue’s
Diana Vreeland, comes up with the idea to do a fashion
spread that shows women can be beautiful as well as brainy.

She
and photographer Dick Avery (Astaire), along with a bunch of the usual witless
blond models, decide to shoot their story at a Greenwich Village bookshop. Jo
Stockton (Audrey), the clerk at the store, becomes incensed when they disrupt
her quiet and mess up her rows of books.

One
of the early difficulties was making Audrey look unattractive for the early
scenes. “I didn’t think that was going to be hard at all, and it really
wasn’t,” Audrey recalled. “But I did have to look vastly different
before I became a model. [Designer] Edith [Head] and [couturier] Hubert [de
Givenchy] focused on colors. In the early parts of the movie, I am dressed in
drab, muddy tones.”

In
one scene, recalled director Stanley Donen, “Audrey and I agreed that she
would wear black, tight-fitting pants, a black sweater, and black shoes. That
was one of her normal outfits, so I didn’t think it would be too much to ask.
Then I casually mentioned that I wanted her to wear white socks with it, and
she was stunned. `Absolutely not!‘ she said. `It will cut the line at my feet!’
she said, `If you don’t wear the white socks, you’ll fade into the background,
there will be no definition to your movement, and the dance sequence will be
bland and dull.‘

“She
burst into tears and ran into her dressing room. After a little while, she
regained her composure, put on the white socks, returned to the set, and went
ahead without a whimper. She was a professional through and through. Later,
when she saw the sequence, she sent me a note saying, `You were right about the
socks. Love, Audrey.‘ ”

In
the movie, while Dick is helping her clean up the mess his models have made,
she tells him about “empathacalism,” the French philosophy she is
studying. He, of course, has little interest in this obscure cult, but he does
like Jo. He suggests to Maggie that she use her for a spread to be shot in
France. She agrees. He suggests to Jo that she take the assignment so that she
can meet her fellow students and teachers on their home turf, especially
Professor Flostre (Michel Auclair).

Everything
is extremely neat and tidy, just as plots should be in movie musicals, but what
distinguishes
Funny Face
from many of
its brethren are the delightfully real and visually striking sequences.

Right
after Dick leaves the bookstore and Jo is alone, she walks among the dusty,
dark shelves, herself dressed in dark neutrals, when she comes upon a long,
colorful scarf left behind by the visitors. Thinking of the kiss Dick has just
stolen from her, she drapes the scarf around herself and begins to sing
“How Long Has This Been Going On?” Dressed in muddy blacks and browns
and grays, her small, sinewy physique is the perfect frame for the colorful
scarf and makes the scarf look as if it is dancing on its own. It is a perfect
moment in film, as is the opening musical number in which Maggie sings
“Think Pink!”

The
other early scenes, in which Jo, Maggie, and Dick first iron out the details
for the European trip, offer a case study in conveying different personalities
merely through body language. The studious Jo (head bent) contrasts easily with
the exuberant Maggie (hands flying), who is very different from the romantic
Dick (soulful gazes).

There
is not much idle chat in
Funny Face,
leaving
more time for the marvelous songs and dances and the wonderfully choreographed
nonmusical sequences, which play like dances without formal steps.

When
Dick and Jo arrive in the City of Light and sing “Bonjour, Paris,” we
begin to fall in love with Audrey just as we are finally warming up to Jo, her bookish
character. It’s a wonderful synchronicity, intensifying audience identification
with the skinny bookworm who turns into a stunning model.

Dick
photographs her all over Paris in the wonderful Duval creations (made for the
screen by the inimitable Givenchy) and she gradually begins to fall in love
with him, returning his feelings. In her scenes as a model, she has never
looked more lovely—except to Givenchy, who remembers that when she briefly
worked as a runway model for him in 1951, he had never seen a more beautiful
woman. But to most of us who witness Audrey in his magnificent dresses in
Funny Face, she could never look more
sweetly elegant.

It
is easy to accept her effect upon Dick in the movie. And while he is snapping
Jo, dressed as a bride, outside a small church in Chantilly, she tells him she
loves him. He sings “He Loves and She Loves,” and the movie soars
into romantic heaven.

In
fact, the scene was nearly impossible to film, thanks to the torrents of rain
that turned the ground to mud. “We had to dance down a lawn and through a
garden,” Audrey recalled. “Every time we began, one of us would sink
lower in the ground. I nearly fell three times. Fred and I took to saying,
`Here’s mud in your eye‘ under our breath, and then we’d get the giggles. It
was quite a long day!”

Along
with other George and Ira Gershwin songs that are performed flawlessly,
“How Long Has This Been Going On?” and “‘S Wonderful”
helped establish a charming screen chemistry between the two stars, despite
their considerable age difference.

The
plot encourages Professor Flostre to act as an obstacle to their budding
romance. But when Jo realizes that he is flirting with her, she becomes
incensed. “I came here to talk to you as a philosopher, and you are
talking like a man,” she says, before hitting him over the head with a
statue.

Of
course, Dick doesn’t realize that Jo has spurned her teacher’s advances, and he
forlornly decides to fly back to the States without her. But in a last-minute
revelation, he learns the truth and searches for Jo all over Paris.

He
finds her in the church where they danced to “He Loves and She
Loves.” In a reprise, they sing “‘S Wonderful,” and gently float
away on a raft.