Being released in 1957, “Funny Face” came out at the tail end of the classic Hollywood movie musical era. Two years earlier, “Oklahoma!” was released in cinemas, and the rise of the roadshow mega-musicals that would go on to dominate (and subsequently kill) the form throughout the 1960s was just beginning. The story of “Funny Face” would have felt just as much at home in the 1930s or 1940s as it does when it was made, and regardless of the decade, it still probably would have starred Fred Astaire. This is a frothy light film, where the scenes act more like excuses to get to the songs than the songs doing any sort of legwork in helping to tell the story. Luckily, Stanley Donen is the one at the helm, and nobody knows how to move their camera to showcase heart-racing, exciting choreography like him. The way he has bodies effortlessly move through beautifully lit spaces, which you also see in films like “Singin’ in the Rain” and “On the Town,” is simply marvelous.
While he is a staple of the Hollywood studio system, Donen was never one to rest on his laurels and always found new ways to push himself as a visual stylist. “Funny Face” serves as a pivot point for the director, meshing together the more traditional work of those earlier musicals and his more experimental side, seen in pictures like “Charade” and “Two for the Road” (both starring Audrey Hepburn). We have the scenes of Fred Astaire singing and dancing to old school Gershwin songs, having fun with different props and all. However, we also have scenes like Audrey Hepburn performing a modern jazz dance in a Parisian nightclub, adorned in a black turtleneck and slacks and bathed in red and green lights. The push and pull of the old and new school is invigorating, and Donen executes both of them to perfection.
As Hollywood was abandoning the classic Academy ratio (1.375:1) in favor of the wider images that CinemaScope (2.55:1) provided, VistaVision was Paramount’s middle ground between the two formats, offering a fine grain film that looked beautiful in 1.85:1. Crucially for “Funny Face,” it provided an exceptional frame in which to capture dance. CinemaScope, while giving the audience a grand frame, can cause a lot of trouble if you are focusing on only a couple of dancers. If you are framing them correctly, where their whole bodies are in the frame, they can look awfully small on screen and are surrounded by a ton of negative space. The way Donen uses VistaVision sees a brilliant compromise of a widescreen format with dance. No set piece, whether that be Astaire dancing alone in a little Parisian square or using split screens to see Astaire, Hepburn, and Kay Thompson traversing the most famous sights of the city, looks equally excellent in the film. No number gets lost in the shuffle, each one popping off the screen.