As cinematic concoctions go, Funny Face, which is rereleased in the UK on Friday, is almost entirely froth. Paramount’s 1957 musical took the name, the star and a handful of songs from a stage show that had debuted three decades before and coaxed them into a brand-new shape. Fred Astaire and a few George-and-Ira-Gershwin tunes remain, but the plot has vanished in a puff of smoke. The stage musical was a crime caper involving a stolen pearl necklace, a pilot, three girls and a trip to Atlantic City. The movie version is an ugly-duckling fairy story: a bookish frump meets a photographer, flies to Paris, falls in love and along the way becomes a dazzlingly gorgeous model, dressed head-to-foot in exclusive designs. Yes, Funny Face the movie is every bit dippy as it sounds, but it works because the frump is Audrey Hepburn, and because this is a film with a fierce passion for its subject matter.
Audrey Hepburn loved fashion, and so does Funny Face. Most of the costumes for the film were designed by the legendary Edith Head, but Funny Face’s crowning glory is a collection of custom-designed gowns by Hubert de Givenchy. Hepburn had first approached Givenchy to design costumes for her in Sabrina, but he was unable to commit time to the project. Instead he gave her the run of the rails and she picked a few choice numbers, including a memorable white strapless gown with black embroidery and a double skirt.
Edith Head won an Oscar for her work on that film, and never properly acknowledged Givenchy’s input, but that was all to change. Hepburn requested that Givenchy design all her future costumes, starting with Funny Face: “His are the only clothes in which I am myself.” The couturier’s name appears on the credits, of course, but his designs are given a starring role. Hepburn, in her role as bookseller turned model Jo, poses beautifully in the outfits in elegant Paris locations: running down the steps of the Louvre waving a scarf of red chiffon; fishing on a barge on the Seine in cropped suit and straw hat; dashing through the Jardin des Tuileries in a cap-sleeved black dress.
The most magnificent exit on any catwalk must be the wedding dress, and Funny Face is nothing if not a fashion show. The Givenchy bridal gown in this film is romantic, but also briskly modern: a full ballerina-length skirt of white net, with a slim-fitting drop-waisted bodice, and the high neckline that Hepburn favoured. A two-tier veil, pinned to Hepburn’s scraped-back hair with a tiny bow, echoes the unusual proportions of the gown. It far outshines both the mistily photographed Coye-la-Forêt backdrop, and the May-December romance between Hepburn and Astaire that it nudges along.
Givenchy isn’t the film’s only connection to the fashion biz, though – those gorgeous clothes are given their proper context. The photographer, played by Astaire, who wrenches Jo out of the bookshop and on to the catwalk works in cahoots with a magazine editor, played by the brilliant Kay Thompson. And these two, Dick Avery and Maggie Prescott, would be familiar to any 1950s fashionista as riffs on photographer Richard Avedon and fashion editor Diana Vreeland. The two were close both professionally and personally – but although both portraits are affectionate, only one of them had anything to do with the film.
Avedon was celebrated for fashion photographs that embraced both movement (what the New Yorker called “the Avedon blur”) and emotion. In the film, Avery photographs Jo at a train station in long-line grey suit and a velvet het, with tears in her eyes. Eight years before, Avedon had shot Dorian Leigh looking wistful on a train for Harper’s Bazaar. His editor, Carmel Snow, was unimpressed, telling him that “Nobody cries in a Dior hat, Dick,” but Avedon was undaunted. Avedon offered more than just inspiration to Funny Face – he produced the photographs for the chic title sequence, and the colourised stills from the photoshoot sequence, which is all based on his signature poses and favoured moody locations. The famous overexposed closeup of Hepburn’s face is Avedon’s also, and cheekily Astaire re-enacts its creation while singing the film’s title song to Hepburn in his dark room. Thanks to Avedon’s contributions, watching Funny Face is like flicking through a high-end fashion magazine.
The voice of that magazine belongs to editor Prescott: a boisterous performance by Thompson that opens the movie with the enjoyably ridiculous number Think Pink. If you have ever enjoyed a movie about the fashion industry, this is a number to savour, as Prescott trashes the galleys of her latest edition and turns an editorial meeting into a dance routine with cameos from 50s supermodels, including Suzy Parker and Sunny Harnett. And the advice contained within is not to be sniffed at either.
There is little about Prescott that doesn’t recall Vreeland, the woman Avedon called his “brilliant, crazy aunt”: her passion for Paris, her boundless energy, her inventiveness with language, including the generous use of the word “pizzazz”, and of course, her eye for talent. Just as Prescott looks at Jo in her boxy tunic and supposedly “funny face” and sees a cover girl, Vreeland favoured quirky looks and “personality” in her models. Vreeland was the fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar, whose editor at the time, Snow, is thanked in Funny Face’s credits. It is a shame, then, that Vreeland was not pleased by the movie, snipping “Never to be discussed” at an assistant as she exited a screening. Most of us would be flattered with the portrait: Thompson kills it on the dancefloor in both her own number and in duets with Astaire and Hepburn, and Think Pink is the film’s standout routine.
Funny Face is a smarter film than it first appears to be. The fantasy of the shop girl catapulted to fame is bolstered by the movie’s feel for the mechanics, and the personalities, of the fashion world. While Hepburn shimmers in Givenchy’s silk gown at the end of a Paris catwalk, Funny Face reminds us of the people behind the scenes who put the girl in the frock in the first place. If it all seems a little ludicrous, remember that Vreeland described fashion as “the intoxicating release from the banality of the world” – and think pink.
• Funny Face is rereleased in cinemas on 28 February
