The Furniture: Funny Face, France, Fashion and Failure
Wednesday, July 1, 2020 at 10:10AM
"The Furniture" is our series on Production Design by Daniel Walber. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.
Funny Face (1957) is not really a complicated movie, visually or otherwise. Its production design doesn’t express inner turmoil or repressive social structures, nor does it take the characters on any sort of elaborate journey. And in some scenes it’s downright boring, director Stanley Donen essentially stepping back to allow Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn room to dance.
But production design doesn’t have to be profound to be good, or even Oscar-worthy. And while I wouldn’t have voted for Funny Face for the Academy Awards, I do think it’s worth a look. Besides, its design does sort of have a message: that the opposite of fashion is books, and that any attempt to combine the two will lead to utter chaos. Is it serious? No, of course not, but it manages to be fun and chic at the same time.
It all starts with a gorgeous opening sequence designed by legendary photographer Richard Avedon, who also served as “Special Visual Consultant”...
It’s very sleek, setting up the vibe at “Quality Magazine.” We open at its executive offices, a minimalist set with a regimented sense of color - primaries on one side, secondaries the other.
The managing editor in question is Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson, in one of her only film roles) and those black double doors lead to her office - my favorite set in the film. It’s clear that she’s very particular about color. The pills and pencils on her desk match the pillows on the window seat.
It’s a neutral space full of accents; beige walls, carpet and furniture as a backdrop for Maggie’s ideas. It’s a representation of the mind of a 1950s editor, one who makes such bold decisions as devoting the entire next issue to a single color.
And that color is pink! This decision leads into a fabulous sequence of living photographs, presumably directed by Avedon himself.
These minimalist fantasies, and the musical number that follows them, constitute the best set design and art direction in the film. Even those colorful doors get a makeover.
The pink issue is a huge hit, but the next issue is in crisis pretty quickly. Photographer Dick Avery (Astaire) just can’t seem to get a convincingly “intellectual” photo out of Marion (played by Dovima, one of Avedon’s most famous collaborators).
And so the whole team heads to Greenwich Village. They wind up at a bookshop staffed by Jo Stockton (Hepburn), a passionate reader of Empathicalist philosophy who hates fashion. The shop is the antithesis of Avedon’s minimalism, particularly after the Quality Magazine crew has torn it apart. But Dick can’t get Jo out of his head and convinces Meggie to take her to Paris and make her the magazine’s new star.
Enticing her to Europe doesn’t make things much better - and it also marks a shift away from the Avedon style. After all, why set up minimalist sets when you can use Paris instead?
The final fashion show takes place indoors, in a large ballroom dripping with ornate French detail - though, like Maggie’s offices back in New York, it is also mostly beige with pink accents.
It’s also prescient, in a bizarre way. Thompson would go on to direct the now-legendary fashion show at Versailles in 1974, when a lineup of American designers (including Halston and Oscar de la Renta) would crash the European establishment. The finale fashion show in Funny Face, however, very nearly doesn’t come off at all. A fountain bursts at the press conference, tearing apart the display and getting everyone soaked.
We eventually get a happy ending, of course, but it’s not terribly satisfying. The meandering discourse of high culture and low culture, pop culture and counterculture, doesn’t really amount to anything. At the end of the day, the only losers are the beatniks and the only winner is Paris, and even then it’s cramped by all the rain. It’s hard to believe Jo will really be happy, either as a model or as the girlfriend of a photographer twice her age.
The last scene is strange, an oddly-lit blur by a stream. The two leads stand improbably on a tiny wooden raft, while some unbothered doves have a snack. The aqueduct at the back seems to suggest, well, nothing. Which is perhaps just as well.
previously this season on 'The Furniture'
The Golem (1920)
Safe (1995)
Frida (2002)
Joan of Arc (2019)
Shirley (2020)
Reader Comments (15)
28 yr old Audrey Hepburn and 58 yr old Fred Astaire (who actually looked older in my opinion) as a romantic couple just didn't work for me making the movie itself a miss for me. That first kiss in the bookshop is more creepy than romantic.
A gorgeous looking movie
My favorite Audrey Hepburn movie.💗💗💗💗💗
Ready: Personally, so long as neither actor is visibly creeped out, I'm usually not TOO distracted by big gaps. Something something Charade is an even weaker movie than this.
Hepburn and Astaire make a convincing romantic couple in "Funny Face" despite the obvious age difference maybe it has to do with artifice of the Hollywood movie musical the most stylized of genres
i was more disturbed by the ransacking of the bookshop
GORGEOUS!
I wait for a movie with Meryl Streep and James McAvoy or Diego Luna or André Holland as lovers ... than we can talk about Hepburn-Astaire again ..,. Time has changed, but are we ready for this?
Thomas: Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool centred on quite a big age-gap romance where the woman was the older partner. I'm not sure I can think of any other recent examples at present though.
I first saw Funny Face 4 times in a row in a film class I snuck into. I had one university class early in the morning and one at night and nothing in between and an hour and a half commute.
I loved it then and I love it now. Yes, it is so visually appealing! And Gershwin and Fred and Audrey and Kay and Donen and Avedon...how perfect. And books and fashion and Paris. A delight.
I think this is the film where Fred would go into his trailer and cry between scenes. His beloved wife of many years had just died. It was a terrible time for him, but he didn’t want to miss his chance of working with Audrey.
At the time what the studio worried about the pairing is that they were both too “fey” to work together. (Whatever that meant). I guess they were both considered elegant but sexless. Which makes you wonder what sweaty grabby thing was considered sexy then.
I don’t mind that Fred is older because I would take Fred at any age. He’s one of the actor/dancers who really likes, appreciates, and respects his female co-stars. In their dances, he always brings out what he finds wonderfully individual in them. They said every woman wanted to dance with Fred Astaire. He made you look your best self.
Just like the faces in pictures destroy the whole art in the same way just a single mistake in the realistic tattoo will destroy your art, getting a tattoo is a desire but getting a perfect tattoo is the process of multiple task 1st your have to meet online tattoo design creator
Style is tied by creating an impression and making a well-characterized look and no other extra does that very like a decent cap. Without a doubt, they can be a little costume, yet that is the point. Simply avoid fascinators. Nobody looks great in those things. Not even at an illustrious wedding.
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