What is more emblematic of Valentine than a good old love story played by Audrey Hepburn in Paris?
The story of a mousy looking bookshop clerk who got discovered by a hot shot fashion photographer (Fred Astaire). He convinces her to go to paris for a major fashion event.
She’s nagging in the following scene to the 1950’s top model, Dovima who looks stupid and pretty at the same time! Audrey doesn’t care about how she looks and has a brain…
Something in Hepburn’s face is so different form others…She looks fresh, innocent and intelligent.
She looks adorable as a child:
Let’s go back to our Valentine story. She takes the plane and they all get to Paris:
Between the photo shoots, they all sing and dance and discover Paris. She has Pont des Arts behind her in this picture and there is even a small boat on the river!
Of course Paris of 1957 looked a little different than today – for one thing it wasn’t exploding with people.
The story is full of clichés: she’s crazy about Parisian philosophers (that’s why she agrees to come to France) and she goes to Montmartre where the artists are:
She’s being photographed in front of the Arc de Carrousel,
and in the Louvre:
She plays with doves in front of the fountains of Place de la Concorde,
and she goes to the Opéra:
They even make her wear a Burqa!
Isn’t she prettier with it around her shoulders instead of her hair?
Now she can have any man she wants…
But she’s only dreaming about one man,
the one who doesn’t want her – the photographer:
He’s played by the dorky Fred Astaire. He was a great dancer but so pathetic playing the leading man with the prettiest of them all, Hepburn!
They fight and she cries and cries…
Quelle merveille…
L’exaltation de la fraîcheur de vivre…
Le don d’éveiller ” l’objectif”… de le ressusciter
Hi Michele !!!
Great indeed…my eldest daughter Audrey will enjoy !!!!
So beautiful……………! joyeuse Saint Valentin, Michele.
I send you love
wrapped in sunshine
tied with a rainbow….
Ahhh.. one of my favourite women ever.
She said
“The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair. The beauty of a woman is seen in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides. True beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It’s the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows & the beauty of a woman only grows with passing years.”
AND
“I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.”
So, any of us is the prettiest lady in the world
and I agree with this other sentence from her
“As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands; one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.”
And many of us can be as her.. just have to think, smile, be kind, helpful and caring much of others whoever they are.
Give a smile to any unknown person in the street, and you may have a smile back in return. Then it would be a great day for both.
May people give and receive a nice smile of happiness and warmth for valentine day.
Thank you so much Michele for this great post again
♥♥♥
I was just thinking that YOU ARE LATE ! But here you are, with the elegance of your taste, and abundance of your talents.
Thank you, and HAPPY VALENTINE.
This is what I sent Ajay who so kindly forwarded this to me:-
Oh… this is such a treasure.
So true….
Audrey Hepburn is a perpetual Valentine… and feature by feature she wasn’t what you’d call a beauty. Too skinny, long nose, sunken cheeks but by God so full of life that she could beat any Venus, Cleopatra or Nefertiti.
Thanks for sharing this.