Funny Face

We should all be lucky enough to have Fred Astaire play us in the movie of our lives. In Stanley Donen’s charming 1957 musical, Funny Face, Astaire plays Dick Avery, a Richard Avedon-esque fashion photographer. Avery discovers a Greenwich Village book nerd played by Audrey Hepburn and somehow transforms her into a celebrated model, despite her handicap of being the most beautiful person in the history of humankind. Funny Face isn’t perfect—the plot is hepcat-baiting hoo-ha, and the love scenes are shot with a gauziness that can’t mask the 30-year age difference between the leads—but you’d also have to be a complete asshole not to adore it. Astaire sings “’S Wonderful,” Hepburn models Givenchy and they both dance through the landmarks of Paris.