Film

Funny Face

Name: Funny Face
Genre: Music, Comedy, Romance
Released: 1957
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Kay Thompson, Michel Auclair, Robert Flemyng

A confection of a musical from Stanley Donen, built around Gershwin standards, Parisian backdrops, and the sheer pleasure of watching Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn dance around each other. It's a satire of fashion and intellectualism dressed up as a romance, all colour and choreography and Kay Thompson's magazine editor stealing every scene she's in. Pure charm, best enjoyed without overthinking the age gap.

TMDb rating

7.0

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Sabrina1954

Hepburn again as a shy girl transformed by Paris, this time by finishing school rather than a camera lens, with Bogart and Holden circling her like the Astaire role split in two.

But The central romance leans on the same era's comfort with big age gaps, and some now find that harder to enjoy.

An American in Paris1951

Gene Kelly, Gershwin, and Paris shot in the same lush Technicolor dream logic — if you loved the score and the setting here, this is the other half of that world, with a legendary ballet finale.

But The plot is thinner than the dancing, and the extended climactic ballet tests patience if you're not already sold on the form.

My Fair Lady1964

Another Hepburn makeover musical, swapping fashion photography for phonetics, with a similar tension between the woman being shaped and the man doing the shaping.

But It's nearly three hours, Hepburn's singing was dubbed, and Higgins is a much less charming Svengali than Astaire's Dick Avery.

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Peeping Tom1960

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Gigi1958

Same Lerner and Loewe DNA, same Parisian gloss, same interest in a young woman being groomed for a world she didn't choose — but with its own gorgeous score and a very different ending.

But The central relationship's age gap and grooming undertones are more overt and harder to wave away than in Funny Face.

Charade1963

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Roman Holiday1953

Hepburn's Oscar-winning breakout, another fairy tale of transformation and escape abroad, lighter on spectacle but heavier on heart.

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Singin' in the Rain1952

If it's the joy of movement and the sheer craft of the studio-era musical you're chasing, this is the genre's peak — funnier, faster, and just as beautifully shot.

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The Band Wagon1953

Astaire in a backstage musical that's self-aware about being an ageing star among younger talent, with some of his finest choreography.

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Top Hat1935

Astaire at his purest, decades earlier, dancing his way through misunderstandings and evening wear with Ginger Rogers — the template this whole genre worked from.

But Black and white, stagier, and the plot is essentially an excuse strung between dance numbers.

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel2012no page yet

Maggie Prescott is a comic version of Diana Vreeland; this is the unfiltered original, in a completely different format, decades later.

A documentary portrait of the real editor Kay Thompson's Maggie Prescott was modelled on, told in Vreeland's own extraordinary voice and full of the same magazine-world mania, minus the songs.

But Talking-head documentary pacing, no plot to speak of, and it demands some interest in fashion history for its own sake.

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Same industry, same satirical target of vapid high fashion, but pushed from gentle 1950s ribbing into full trashy farce.

A gleefully stupid comedy set in the same fashion-and-photography ecosystem, run through a blender of early-2000s absurdism, with Ben Stiller as the model instead of the muse.

But It's broad, dumb-on-purpose comedy with none of the elegance or musicality, and some of its humour has aged awkwardly.