“For me directing is like having sex: when it’s good, it’s very good; but when it’s bad, it’s still good.” – Stanley Donen
I feel so fortunate to have met him when he came and spoke at my school. In a particularly magic moment, he took the hand of a student in the front row, pulled her to her feet, and danced with her, taking her in hand, floating sideways across the stage with her, a moment of perfect grace.
During his time with us, he was asked, “How do you direct Audrey Hepburn and not fall in love with her?”
He replied, “You don’t.”
Stanley Donen was responsible for creating such iconic images and movements and feelings they’ve seeped so totally into the culture we can’t even trace them back to their origins. Or, we can, but these images, moments, gestures, feelings, have traveled so far they have taken on a life of their own. It is as though they have always been there. But they haven’t. He created them.
He’d be in the history books for this alone.
But then there’s:
and …
Funny Face, another adored classic. Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn? Come on!
Pajama Game, co-directed with George Abbott (who also wrote the script, and co-directed the Broadway production with Jerome Robbins), is also a fave. In the famous “Steam Heat”, it’s really Bob Fosse’s choreography that is the star. The camera placement and camera movement – from stage level – to above the stage – to sometimes (rarely) up on the stage – paves the way for that realization. It’s about Fosse. Filming a dance sequence in this intuitive and generous way is almost a lost art.
We need long shots to see the three steam-chimneys move as one. The camera has to move at the same speed as them – but with then the big flung-out show-bizzy Fosse gestures – you need cuts to accentuate. Film-making is a collaboration: editing/camera/direction. In “Steam Heat,” nothing distracts from that which is most important: the choreography as executed by these geniuses.
Speaking of Fosse, there’s also this great number from Damn Yankees, with Fosse and Gwen Verdon.
Fosse again, a fantastic number in Stanley Donen’s film adaptation of The Little Prince:
Donen’s work in the 60s is excellent, zipping with verve, fun, silliness, heart. Two for the Road, starring Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn may … dare I say it … be my favorite film of his? Oh hell, I don’t need to choose. But it’s so wonderful.
How much do I love Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn? When Hepburn musingly asks, “How do you shave in there?”, touching Cary Grant’s dimple, she asks what so many of us thought.
The film is filled with meta-fun, plus their beauty, they’re both so insanely beautiful, beauty and charm to revel in. The film revels in it frankly and with no apology. Why deprive ourselves of enjoying their beauty, or pretend that that’s not what we’re doing? Donen knew what we wanted.
And then there’s the meta-perfection of this moment.
Here, Donen loops in the awareness of the entirety of Grant’s career, his rapport with audiences for 30 years at that point, the love everyone had for him. Let’s adore him without caveat or exception.
In 1997, Stanley Donen won an Honorary Oscar. His acceptance speech is one of the high watermarks in the history of the Academy Awards broadcast.
We’ve lost a huge link to our collective past. But his work will live on.
Rest in peace.
Lovely writing, as usual. Re “Charade”. Don’t you just love the fact that despite the fact that these two people are clearly and obviously in love, Mr. Donen rarely (if ever) shows them in passionate kissing? At least I don’t remember any. My memory may be lax but I remember a lot of touching but no kissing. I also love Cary Grant and the unnamed female and the passing of the oranges. I wonder whose idea was that.
// Mr. Donen rarely (if ever) shows them in passionate kissing? //
Carolyn – I know!! It’s all just charm and wit and beauty and playfulness.
And the orange passing!! Yes! It’s so amazing to consider just how far into his career Grant was – grey hair – elderly, basically – still a leading man. He was such a miracle.
Thanks for commenting!
I don’t think I realized until today just how big a place his films have had in my life. Singing in the Rain AND Charade? Two for the Road AND Bedazzled? “Steam Heat” AND Emphaticalism? One could go on. Lovely tribute as always and it’s great that you actually met him. He’s one of the very few I wish I HAD met, just to say thanks.
Bedazzled!! I forgot to mention that one!
// I don’t think I realized until today just how big a place his films have had in my life. //
Ha! I know just what you mean. I started going through all of them – and – like Jessica R below – started watching all these numbers from different movies – and present all over again to just how much his movies have been a part of my life. Like a lot of people, I started with Singin in the Rain and I saw it so early in my life I honestly don’t remember the first time. And it works great for little kids too – who somehow “get” it even if they dont understand all of it.
And my God, what an impression it made. Cyd Charisse’s leg coming into the frame! Yowza!!
and yes, he was very nice when I met him – and he came with his BFF Leonard Nimoy. So I met the two of them on the same day, which was surreal.
I’ve been looking up numbers from Donen musicals all evening and feeling a mix of extreme sadness and the lovely joy it’s impossible not to feel watching his work. It aches that that last link is gone, Fred and Audrey and now the man who filmed them. But the work is for always. An unembarrassed surrender to enchantment I miss so much in musicals, hell in movies generally. What a life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xo1onGh3us
Jessica – I’ve had a similar experience all day. Just watching clips. I know so many of them by heart – I just was really aware of how much these things have seeped into my consciousness, and helped basically FORM my love of movies (in particular movie musicals – which were already totally out of style when I was a kid. But it didn’t really matter because I got to watch all the old ones!)
Thanks for the clip – the two of them together are just magic!
I don’t really feel sad — Donen was spared for a good long life and gave us lots to remember him by — but I certainly feel thoughtful and reminiscent, recalling all that he was a link to.
If I may be forgiven a personal memory: My father directed TV commercials and short films in Chicago in the 1950s and 60s, and as such joined the DGA in the late 40s. That union provides a good pension tied to number of years of membership (my mother, who’ll be 99 this week, still benefits from it). And after a couple of the old-timers passed away maybe 20 years ago (possibly Fred Zinnemann and Billy Wilder), my father would joke “Only Stanley Donen gets a bigger monthly check than I do!” And now that last link to that time has been broken. But we still have the movies Donen made.
Rinaldo – what a great story about your dad. and 99 years old! That’s amazing and wonderful!
Donen left behind an amazing legacy!
Thanks. (Mom is amazing; still sharp, and reasonably active.)
I wonder if that’s literally true, actually — was Donen the surviving director whose DGA membership began earliest? (And if so, who has inherited that honor now?)
glad to hear that about your mother!
I mean, On the Town – his first film – was 1949 – so that’s damn early – I’m blanking on any other director who might be earlier than Donen and still alive.