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Funny Face (1956)

Director: Stanley Donen

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From Time Out Film Guide

The musical that dares to rhyme Sartre with Montmartre, Funny Face - surprisingly from Paramount rather than MGM - knocks most other musicals off the screen for its visual beauty, its witty panache, and its totally uncalculating charm. The beauty is most irresistible in the sylvan scene, shimmering through gauze, when Astaire and Hepburn find they 'empathise', to use the film's joke. The panache is most sustained in the 'Clap Yo' Hands' number, in which Astaire and Thompson shuffle on as a couple of beats and develop a dazzlingly inventive send-up. The charm is everywhere. Love triumphs over capitalist exploitation, joyless intellectualisation, and all things phony; and the thesis persuades because of the commitment and skill of the team and the lightness of the underrated Donen's touch.

Author: SG 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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Cast & crew

Director: Stanley Donen

Producer: Roger Edens

Cast: Fred Astaire, Audrey Hepburn, Kay Thompson, Michel Auclair, Suzy Parker, Robert Flemyng full cast

Genre(s): Musicals

Duration: 103 mins


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