Funny Face [F]
Released in February 1957 by Paramount Pictures. Music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin. Screenplay by Leonard Gershe. Directed by Stanley Donen. Produced by Roger Edens. Cast included Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Kay Thompson, and Michel Auclair.
Though this film used several musical numbers from the Gershwins’ 1927 musical of the same name (that starred Fred and Adele Astaire), the screenplay by Leonard Gershe had nothing to do with the original. In addition to the musical numbers, the story, in which Astaire played a photographer who falls in love with a model (Hepburn), gave the film an opportunity for lavish fashion sequences supervised by photographer Richard Avedon. Astaire and Kay Thompson nearly bring the film to a standstill with their “beat” version of the classic “Clap Yo’ Hands.”