Coolidge Corner Theatre Big Screen Classics Begins Tonight
Summer-long series kicks off with musical Funny Face
The 1957 romantic comedy Funny Face, starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire, launches the Coolidge Corner Theatre’s summer Big Screen Classics series, which runs Monday evenings through August. Photo courtesy Photofest
Craving a night at the movies but not interested in any of this summer’s blockbusters? Head over to Coolidge Corner Theatre tonight, where a screening of the 1957 romantic musical comedy Funny Face kicks off the annual Big Screen Classics series, showing most Monday nights through August.
Funny Face stars Audrey Hepburn and veteran Hollywood song and dance man Fred Astaire. Astaire’s character, Dick Avery (said to be based on fashion photographer Richard Avedon), discovers beatnik bookstore clerk Jo (Hepburn) and turns her into a Paris supermodel. Avedon was a visual consultant on the film and among several many of his iconic photographs in the film is a overexposed close-up of Hepburn’s eyes and mouth. The visually stunning film has romance, sophisticated dance numbers, and music by George and Ira Gershwin that will have you humming as you leave the theater, such as the classics “S’Wonderful” and “How Long Has This Been Going On?”
Hepburn, who had recently won an Oscar for Roman Holiday, sang her own songs here, unlike her performance seven years later in My Fair Lady.
Other movies being screened in the series include The Philadelphia Story, starring Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, and Cary Grant, on June 6; the animated cyberpunk film Akira, a mesmerizing journey into brutal, post-apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo, on July 25; and the 1979 sci-fi horror film Alien, starring Sigourney Weaver, which closes out the series on August 29. Find a complete film list, dates, and times here.
The Coolidge Corner Theatre website says the series’ purpose is to show “some of our favorite movies the way they were meant to be seen: larger-than-life on the glorious BIG screen.”
The Big Screen Classics series is shown at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline. All screenings are at 7 p.m. Tickets are $11.25 for adults, $9.25 for seniors and children; purchase online or at the door. Take a MBTA Green Line C trolley to the Coolidge Corner stop.
Kylie Obermeier can be reached at kylieko@bu.edu; follow her on Twitter at @kyliekobermeier.
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