Director: Stanley Donen
Year Released: 1957
Rating: 0.5
American photographer Fred Astaire (playing Richard Avedon, who this film is Donen's love letter to) recruits pseudo-intellectual Audrey Hepburn for a photo shoot, causing her to give up the dreary solitude of learning and go outside to show off a Givenchy ensemble, thereby reinforcing the film's dreadful point that women should keep their heads out of 'complex books' and stick to things they know, like looking good and smiling. Its attempt to satirize/capture the Parisian philosophical circle during the existentialist boom is embarrassing - Hepburn is given a dance number where she, like Elaine from Seinfeld, tries to dance but looks like she's having a very animated standing seizure - and the philosopher king Hepburn's character is interested in is a sexual predator and fraud. Besides dismissing intellectuals as pretentious goof balls, it also sticks to only the glitz and glam pieces from Avedon's extensive oeuvre, safely ignoring the un-commercial photos he took of the mentally ill and vagabonds.
