Research: Film: Funny Face (1957)

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Project 03 Body and Experience

Funny Face is a 1957 American musical romantic comedy film directed by Stanley Donen and written by Leonard Gershe, containing assorted songs by George and Ira Gershwin. Although having the same title as the 1927 Broadway musical Funny Face by the Gershwin brothers, and featuring the same male star (Fred Astaire), the plot is completely different and only four of the songs from the stage musical are included. Alongside Astaire, the film stars Audrey Hepburn and Kay Thompson.

Iconic Dance Scene

In the 1957 film Funny Face, the intellectual-turned-model Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn) challenges the antiquated views of cynical fashion photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire). They’re sitting in a smokey Parisian beatnik bar, a très cool cave surrounded by a young avant-garde crowd… and Dick doesn’t think women should ever ask for a dance.
Jo protests, and pops off into one of the most iconic dance scenes in cinematic history.

“Isn’t it time you realized that dancing is nothing more than a form of expression or release? There’s no need to be formal or cute about it. As a matter of fact, I rather feel like expressing myself now. And I could certainly use a release!”

Directed by Stanley Donen and choreographed by Eugene Loring, Hepburn’s counter culture expression is a bursting, joyful, and electric interpretive dance that matches the scene’s saturated colours. The jazzy music is titled Basal Metabolism (How Long Has This Been Going On).

Hepburn’s approach to fashion reflected her Funny Face character’s views about dance; it, too, was an expression and a release. And, fittingly, Hepburn’s style in turn relied on dance for inspiration.

While her collaboration with Hubert de Givenchy is legendary – in Hepburn, he found a muse for his cinched waists and full skirts – she is also remembered for the black Capri pants and Salvatore Ferragamo ballet flats made famous in Funny Face. These emphasised her dancer’s physique, and sent women the world over into a terpsichorean-style frenzy they still haven’t recovered from. (Just witness the enduring popularity of ballet flats.)

With her vivid style and incomparable elegance, Audrey Hepburn truly is the patron style saint of ballerinas.

Audrey Hepburn’s beatnik dance scene in Funny Face
https://australianballet.com.au/blog/dance-expression-and-audrey-hepburn
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6099975
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