Funny

1957 marked the last year of the great Hollywood musical and moviegoers saw three
Marvelous examples of what Hollywood use to do best. The musicals were Paramount’s Funny Face, Warner Bros.'s The Pajama Game & M.G.M’s Les Girls which was the last original Hollywood musical and had a score written by Cole Porter no less. All 3 films played at Radio City Music Hall, and this then 10-year-old saw all three of them there. Maybe down the road, I’ll write about the other two, but for now its Funny Face which was based on an old Broadway revue from 1927 with music by George and Ira Gershwin that starred the brother & sister dancing team of Fred & Adele Astaire. For the film version much of the Gershwin’s score was kept and some new original music by Ira Gershwin & Leonard Gershe was added. They also attached a somewhat bright and somewhat new 50’s story to it to fit the large talents of Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. In the film Astaire plays a fashion photographer loosely based on Richard Avedon (By the way Avedon designed the stylish snazzy opening credits) who works for a top fashion Magazine, (think Vogue) whose editor played by the great Kay Thompson (think Diana Vreeland) is looking for the perfect new face. They stumble across Hepburn (never more beautiful) working in a dusty Greenwich Village bookstore (remember those) while on a location shot, and before you can say Christian Dior, everyone is off to Paris, where Hepburn is touted as "the new face" and gets to model some swell de Givenchy gowns amid lovely Paris locals. Needless to say Hepburn falls for Astaire, which in the uptight 50's was pretty racy stuff, since Astaire was 58 at the time & much older than Hepburn who was only 28. That pretty much is the plot. Not much to work with one would think, but the director Stanley Donen has taken this cotton candy of a storyline and fashioned one of the most enjoyable and best musicals of the 50's. There are several set pieces most of which the great Kay Thompson takes part in and she pretty much steals the show. Her performance is one of the most manic and some might even say psychotic performances ever put on celluloid, and I don’t hesitate to say that if this was a real person a net would be thrown over her and off she would go to the looney bin where she could sing and dance to her hearts’ content and trade stories with Baby Jane Hudson, Dr. Mabuse and Norman Bates. Thompson only made three films., and most of her Hollywood work was behind the scenes as a vocal arranger & lyricist for several M.G.M. musicals of the 1940's. She is probably best known as the author of the annoying and everlasting children's book Eloise and for being the Godmother of Liza Minnelli. We’ll forgive her for those trespasses and instead say thank God for those fabulous open toe shoes that she wears through most of the movie. Some of the stuff falls flat, especially Hepburn's on again off again infatuation with a phony Paris philosopher (think Satre) who is more interested in Hepburn's body than her mind. That's a minor fault, because this is a musical that offers so much in the way of its music, performances dancing, decor, costume & cinematography.