FUNNY FACE

"Why did you do that?" "Empathy.  I put myself in your position and decided you wanted me to kiss you"--FUNNY FACE

We got a break from choir practice for a couple of weeks, partly because Coro Verdi's future's still uncertain.  I could use it.  After the second MACBETH performance yesterday, I had a headache so big that I went to bed right after supper.  Moira went to the second performance and enjoyed it. (She borrowed the score from the library and learned lots of details about the opera.) She's surprised that after it was finished Giuseppe, Adolfo and the soloists weren't too tired to make conversation.

So this evening I went to see Stanley Donen's 1957 movie of the Gershwin musical FUNNY FACE, with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn, at the Yonge & Dundas Event Screen.  The best thing about it was the look, back from the age of three-color Technicolor.  Famous photographer Richard Avedon was a visual consultant and designed the striking opening-title sequence.  Astaire plays a fashion photographer called Dick Avery--sound like any visual consultants we know?--who discovers "new look" model AH in a Greenwich Village bookstore and takes her to Paris for a Big, Important fashion shoot. (Hollywood kept making romantic pairings of AH with visibly older actors--Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Rex Harrison--which seems a bit creepy today.) Kay Thompson, author of the Eloise books, plays a fashion editor clearly based on Diana Vreeland.

The story is pretty weak.  The plot requires AH to be so flaky that she keeps disappearing when she's needed at her workplace. (Say, maybe they should have hired a more experienced model!) And it's rather predictable:  just when I was thinking "It's time for the Big Complication to almost destroy the romance," the big complication came along in the form of the Paris philosopher AH worships.  I did like the scenes set in Paris' bohemian world, including a cafe where AH does a funny free-form dance.

The 1950s was a depressing time in some ways, including the popular assumption that women were supposed to make beauty their highest priority. (Audrey Hepburn once said "Laughter is a calorie burner," and she must have laughed a lot!)