The Reversal of the Triple Personality of Paris in Funny Face (Stanley Donen, 1957): The Predominance of the Tourist Vision of the City

Abstract

The French capital is the foreign city most portray ed in the Hollywood cinema industry. Paris vu par Hollywood , an exhibition that can be visited in the City of Lights’ Hôtel de Ville (until the 15th December 2012), introd uces this idea. The activity invites the visitors, throughout different materials (photo graphies from the shootings, costumes, audiovisual fragments, etc.), to get to know how the evolution of Paris’ cinematographic image has been produced (in the genres and decade ways) in the North American cinema. This article analyzes one of the m ost representative films in the construction of the image of Paris during the 50’s: Funny Face , a musical directed by Stanley Donen and starring Audrey Hepburn, Fred Ast aire and Kay Thompson. In this way, there are two principal ideas to demonstr ate: the fact that this film respects the rules identified for this decade and, because o f that, the city’s vision is typically bohemian (this Paris where a festive and famous lit erary and artistic group lives, as it is said in the exposition); but, equally, how, in s pite of working with a triple identity associated to the principal characters, the predomi nant one is the touristic. A cinematographic promenade along the “City of Lights” th at shows that its identity is associated to a reductionist number of historical, ar tistic and architectural icons.