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…