I mean Audrey Hepburn looked so young and fresh...25..26, somewhere around there and then there's Fred Astaire who looks like her father. I thought it was a little iky when they kissed.
shareAgreed. I know it was very much of its time but its just soooooo wrong. It can work with a handsome older man like Cary Grant, bit Fred Astaire was like a gentle old grandad. No, just no !
shareI noticed that myself. Though Fred Astaire looked younger than his years, he was clearly much older than her.
shareHe's spiritually much younger than her, it's her who's the oldy.
Now ask me how I really feel, I'm just here for the comments.
I got to know Fred Astaire through his later films, the ones in color. I'd be so grossed out. I'd be watching this movie starring some young, glamorous girl, maybe she had a boyfriend near her age, and suddenly this old, wrinkled, skinny guy would be smarming around her. I'd wait the whole movie for her to kick his ass, and instead they'd end up together. I remember bitching about this once, and my mom said "That's Fred Astaire." I didn't see why it would matter or explain why this skinny senior citizen was pushing himself on young women.
Now that I get how stardom works, it's still gross when he kisses Audrey Hepburn by surprise.
Well, I don't have a problem with an age difference like that, but I really don't see anything attractive about him either. (I know a generation of women swooned for him, but I really can't figure out why!)
shareFred was totally unattractive when he wasn't dancing. He was magical in motion, whether solo or with a partner, and his partnership with Ginger Rogers was little short of miraculous, they moved like God had made them just to dance with each other. But when he wasn't dancing, Fred was an odd, awkward, likable, but totally sexless screen presence.
Which doesn't really work for this film, the story doesn't make sense unless he has at least a little sex appeal, and he doesn't have any. So I like to think the characters had a nice affair that took them across Europe and resulted in some lovely photos, before breaking up because they weren't really compatible. And he went back to taking photos and eventually married some woman who was happy to be Mrs. Photographer, and she became a writer whose work only occasionally touched on fashion.