Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn) is not happy about fashionistas taking over the bookstore where she works in FUNNY FACE
CinéSalon: FUNNY FACE (Stanley Donen, 1957)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, April 7, $13, 4:00 & 7:30
Festival runs April 7 – May 26
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org
The French Institute Alliance Française’s third annual “Fashion at Fiaf” festival kicks off April 7 with the “’s wonderful, ’s marvelous” 1957 romantic musical comedy Funny Face. When Quality magazine editor and publisher Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson) decides she’s after the next big thing, photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire playing a fictionalized version of Richard Avedon, who served as a consultant on the film and took the photos) asks, “Are there no models who can think as well as they look?” So they descend on a “sinister” bookstore in Greenwich Village, Embryo Concepts, to show the intellectual side of star model Marion (real-life model Dovima), but instead Dick believes that the bohemian bookstore’s mousy, idealistic sales clerk, Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn), might just be exactly what they’re looking for, a fresh face with “character, spirit, and intelligence.” Jo is steadfastly averse to the plan at first, until Dick convinces her that it would be a great opportunity for her to see Paris and go to a lecture by her favorite philosopher, professor Emile Flostre (Michel Auclair), the father of empathicalism. So Maggie, Dick, Jo, and their crew head over to France, where Jo will soon be strutting down the runway in a line specially created for her by superstar designer Paul Duval (Robert Flemyng). But once they get to the City of Lights, everything goes more than a bit haywire as haute couture battles counterculture chic.
Audrey Hepburn is glamorous in Givenchy in classic musical
Partially based on an unproduced show by screenwriter Leonard Gershe called Wedding Bells — which was inspired by the real-life relationship between Avedon and model and actress Doe Nowell — and including four songs from George Gershwin’s 1927 musical, also called Funny Face (and starring Astaire and his sister, Adele), the film is an utter delight from start to finish. Despite an age difference of nearly thirty years, Hepburn and Astaire have genuine chemistry as their characters fall for each other. Unlike 1964’s My Fair Lady, in which Hepburn’s singing voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon, she does all of her own vocalizing in Funny Face, including a lovely solo on “How Long Has This Been Going On?,” and she uses her childhood dance training to fabulous effect in a stunning modern dance scene in a dark and smoky bohemian club. Astaire is a joy as Avery, particularly in the dazzling solo number “Let’s Kiss and Make Up,” performed with hat, raincoat, and umbrella. And Thompson, in her only major film role — she was already in the midst of her four-book children’s series about Eloise, the girl who lives in the Plaza Hotel in New York City — gets things going with the glorious opener “Think Pink!,” her character inspired by Harper’s Bazaar editors Carmel Snow and Diana Vreeland. Among the other songs by George and Ira Gershwin are “On How to Be Lovely,” “He Loves and She Loves,” “Clap Yo’ Hands,” and “Bonjour, Paris!” The costumes, of course, are spectacular, courtesy of Edith Head and Hubert de Givenchy, as are Eugene Loring’s choreography and Stanley Donen’s direction as the story roams around many of Paris’s iconic locations. Everything about the film, which was nominated for four Oscars but came up empty, is fun and fashionable, including cameos by model Suzy Parker; Carole Eastman, who would go on to write Five Easy Pieces and The Fortune; Hepburn’s mother; and a group of girls dressed up like French children’s book favorite Madeline.
Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) want to kiss and make up with Jo Stockton (Audrey Hepburn) in FUNNY FACE
Funny Face is screening April 7 at 4:00 & 7:30 as part of the FIAF CinéSalon series “Haute Couture on Film”; both screenings will be followed by a wine reception, and journalist Anne-Katrin Titze will introduce the later show. The series continues through May 26 with such other films as Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, John Cassavetes’s Gloria, Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, and Jean Negulesco’s How to Marry a Millionaire. “Fashion at Fiaf” also includes talks with Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler, Kate Betts, and Garance Doré and a gallery show of the work of photographer Grégoire Alexandre.
You can add Hagen, the protagonist of Kornel Mundruczó’s White God, to the list of great canine characters in film, joining such esteemed company as Lassie, Benji, Beethoven, Sounder, Old Yeller, and, of course, Cujo. Played by year-old siblings Luke and Bodie, who were discovered by animal coordinator Teresa Miller in the classifieds, Hagen is man’s prototypical best friend — or in this case, the constant companion of thirteen-year-old classical trumpeter Lili (Zsófia Psotta) — smart and caring, loyal and loving, until things go really, really wrong. (Miller trained under her father, Karl Lewis Miller, who worked on such films as They Only Kill Their Masters, Dracula’s Dog, Call of the Wild, Babe, Cujo, and the Beethoven movies.) When her mother (Lili Horváth) and her new husband go away for a few months, Lili is forced to stay with her bitter, unhappy father (Zsótér Sándor), who refuses to register Hagen with the authorities and pay the dog tax. (In Hungary, mixed-breed dogs are taxed but purebred are not in an effort to control the feral population.) He throws Hagen out of their car, leaving him by the side of the road. At first Lili and Hagen try to find each other, but soon the dog becomes entangled in a series of dangerous situations, fighting for his life — and then fighting back, for mistreated mutts everywhere.
Over the course of his storied five-decade career, German-born auteur and photographer Wim Wenders has alternated between making documentaries, primarily about other artists (
New York City-born French filmmaker Eugène Green equates humanity and architecture in the lush, rich film La Sapienza. Named for the concept of gaining wisdom as well as Italian architect Francesco Borromini’s seventeenth-century Roman Catholic Baroque church Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza, the film follows an older couple who rediscover their personal and professional passion after meeting a young pair of siblings. Architect Alexandre Schmidt (Fabrizio Rongione) and his wife, sociologist Aliénor (Christelle Prot Landman), are walking through a park in Switzerland when they see a teenage girl (Arianna Nastro) nearly collapse into the arms of a slightly older boy (Ludovico Succio). It turns out that Lavinia is suffering from incapacitating dizzy spells and is cared for by her brother, Goffredo, who is interested in studying architecture. Aliénor becomes involved in Lavinia’s situation while Alexandre, an intense, cynical man, returns to the book he is writing on Borromini (who famously worked in the shadow of Bernini) and travels to Italy with Goffredo as the boy’s reluctant mentor. Green’s (Toutes les nuits, Le monde vivant) first digital feature opens with the glorious sounds of Claudio Monteverdi accompanying cinematographer Raphaël O’Byrne’s magisterial shots of statuary and architecture in Rome. The acting at the start, particularly Rongione’s, is purposefully stiff and mannered, cold and stonelike, but it warms up as the characters learn (or relearn) about the myriad possibilities life offers. Green, who also appears in the film as the grizzled Chaldean, uses the metaphor of Baroque architecture’s role in the Counter-Reformation as a symbol for Alexandre and Aliénor’s relationship, as they finally face long-held emotions and reconsider their future, all while Green lingers on magnificent structures.