In a recent interview with UK’s Daily Mail, Emma Thompson made the shocking announcement that she is not a fan of Audrey Hepburn. More accurately she is quoted as saying, “I find Audrey Hepburn fantastically twee (…) Twee is whimsy without wit. It is mimsy-mumsy sweetness without any kind of bite (…) She can’t sing and she can’t really act, I’m afraid.” Predictably, Audrey Hepburn fans are up in arms about the comments; however, I can’t help but partially agree with Thompson’s comments.
Before Hepburn fans completely fly off the handle, I don’t think that Audrey Hepburn can’t act. On the contrary, I can’t see another actress playing Princess Ann, Sabrina Fairchild, and I’ve even come around on her iconic portrayal of Holly Golightly, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I think she genuinely great playing a threatened blind woman in the fantastic Wait Until Dark, and think that she’s a compelling lead in the surprisingly watchable The Nun’s Story.
That been said, many of Hepburn’s early films have this confectionary quality about them. While some of this can be attributed to Hepburn’s spritely, girlish persona, much of this is due to the films themselves: the writing, direction, and overall tone of the film. For example, in Roman Holiday, up until the final ten minutes, the film is about the magical adventures of a runaway princess in Rome. There is something inherently whimsical about that plotline, and although there’s a subplot about a reporter trying to use the Princess to further his career, Hepburn’s charms whittle away his hardnosed exterior and he does the right thing in the end.
Another example of a film that that doesn’t work as well with Hepburn’s persona is Funny Face, where the audience is forced to buy Hepburn as a beatnik, philosophy obsessed book store clerk who is discovered by a great fashion photographer and whisked away to Paris to become an international model. While the fairy-tale of being snatched from obscurity and being taken to a romantic European city when you find love with a rapidly aging Fred Astaire and a new found sense of self-worth perfectly aligns with the Hepburn persona, the entire effort comes off as somewhat obnoxious, especially when she is trying to pass herself off as a serious intellectual. The famous scene where she starts dance on a table in a Paris beatnik bar while singing about her love of philosophy seems ridiculously out of character for a true intellectual. According to the film, all a bookish woman needs is a makeover, a trip to Paris, and the love of a man to cure her of her pretensions- a shallow, insulting message to send to women. Mind you, Hepburn did not write the film and had the screenwriters decided against making Hepburn’s character a caricature of what they believed a female intellectual should be, the film would have been a delightful (albeit old fashioned) Cinderella story.
The bulk of Emma Thompson’s arguments against Hepburn are aimed squarely at her portrayal of Eliza Doolittle, in My Fair Lady. While I too find the film insufferably long and painful to get through, I think it is unfair to heap so much blame on Hepburn. Yes, Hepburn was woefully miscast as Eliza Doolittle, a role which forces her to move away from her comfort zone of fragile elfin innocence to play a petulant woman who spends the first half of the film carrying on like a spoiled, ill-tempered three-year-old who can only be plied by sweets (quite literally). It’s an ugly role that forces her to play off of the equally repugnant character of Henry Higgins, played by Rex Harrison. However, as stated previously it is not Hepburn’s fault, and she looks like she is trying hard to make it work- it just doesn’t. This film is, as Thompson remarks, overly long and relies on weak, overwrought musical numbers to move along the story. Why the film has become such a highly regarded piece of cinema is a complete mystery to me. Interestingly, Thompson is currently writing a remake of the 1964 classic, and it will be interesting how her spin on the story plays out.
So we come to the ultimate question, is Audrey Hepburn twee? For the most part I would say yes. In the roles where she is truly successful there is a complete lack of guile and cynicism in those characters, and more often than not a character’s wit is often derived from their negative views of life. Characters like Sabrina Fairchild and Holly Golightly seem to float through their beautiful whimsical world oblivious to the hardships that exist, however, I think that is what makes them so appealing. Hardships are small and fleeting and at the end of the movie you know that everything is going to end perfectly and Hepburn’s characters will retain that youthful innocence that fans fell in love with in the beginning. More than any other Hollywood actress (including her contemporaries who actually did become royalty) she embodies the fairytale princess archetype. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Everyone needs a little sugar once and a while, and many of Hepburn’s best films fit the bill. I urge everyone to go out and watch Roman Holiday, Sabrina, and even the flawed Breakfast at Tiffany’s when you need a little pick-me-up.
