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Jordan had originally been cast as Honey Hale in Flying Down to Rio (1933), but the role went instead to the 22 year-old Rogers, a veteran of 19 features who had just caught the eye in a couple of Busby Berkeley backstagers at Warners, 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, which had revived a genre that had been considered box-office poison after it was flogged to death in the early sound era. Rogers knew Astaire from their Broadway days, when they had briefly dated. But she wasn't looking for a regular dance partner and neither was he, having just broken up a hugely successful stage act with his sister Adele, who had retired after marrying an English toff.

Indeed, Astaire wasn't even sure he was suited for movies. After all, he had been famously written off after a 1928 Paramount screen test - `Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little.' He had debuted by shuffling through a number with Joan Crawford in MGM's Dancing Lady (1933), but he was fifth-billed behind Rogers in Thornton Freeland's slice of Brazilian escapism and he was a virtual spectator before he and Ginger danced `The Carioca' on top of seven white pianos in the big finale and unexpectedly launched a nationwide dance craze.

This number alone made Flying Down to Rio one of RKO's top earners of the year and, together with King Kong, it helped save the studio from bankruptcy. Keen to cash in on Astaire and Rogers's new-found popularity, the front office rushed them into The Gay Divorcee (1934) and Roberta (1935). But it was to be Top Hat (1935) that best showcased the combination of wit, grace and charm that Katharine Hepburn mischievously summed up by averring, `she gives him sex and he gives her class'.

Seen today, it's hard to believe that this seamlessly structured screwball - in which socialite Dale Tremont (Rogers) mistakes entertainer Jerry Travers (Astaire) for Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton), the husband of her best friend, Madge (Helen Broderick) - was something of a cut`n'paste job. But writer Dwight Taylor plagiarised his own libretto for Cole Porter's 1932 show, A Gay Divorce, and welded it to the fashion designer subplot from Joseph H. Montgomery's play Irene (which RKO had optioned as a vehicle for Rogers) and the comedy of errors concept from Alexander Farago and Aladar Laszlo's A Scandal in Budapest, which the studio had bought and then had to abandon after the Hays Office objected to its saucy storyline.

Even Astaire resorted to repeating himself, as he borrowed from his stage hits Funny Face (1927) and Smiles (1930) for the`Top Hat, White Tie and Tails' routine, in which he machine-guns down a male chorus clad in evening wear. But in every other aspect, this meticulously crafted picture set out to break the mould.

At a time when the majority of Hollywood musicals were emphasising the New Deal message of unity and sacrifice that President Roosevelt hoped would haul America out of the Depression, Top Hat ignored the familiar formula of eager wannabes struggling to put on a show and set its action in an impossibly glamorous Art Deco world of affluence and leisure, where the opening night was a guaranteed triumph and a chap would be considered an absolute cad unless flitted from London to Venice in pursuit of his beloved.

Consequently, art directors Van Nest Polglase and Carroll Clark designed sets that espoused an aspirational grandeur that gave Astaire's brash American the licence to breeze in and ruffle the feathers of both the stuffy members of a gentleman's club and the aloof Italian gentry without ever appearing vulgar or out of place. The Venetian sets owed much to the conspicuous opulence of the so-called `white telephone' romcoms that were then all the rage in Italy. But local audiences never got the chance to see Top Hat, as Mussolini was so appalled by the caricature created by Erik Rhodes as Beddini (the English-mangling dressmaker to whom Rogers becomes engaged to make Astaire jealous), that he had the film banned.

But what particularly set Top Hat apart was the complete integration of Irving Berlin's songs into the narrative. Most movie musicals were set in theatres, film studios or radio stations as an excuse to pause proceedings for a song. But producer Pandro S. Berman and director Mark Sandrich were keen to have the numbers emerge naturally out of everyday situations. So, Berlin sat in on story conferences and tailored his score to the plot. Thus, Astaire breaks into `No Strings' at the hotel to quash Horton's suggestion that he finds a wife and his dance steps wake up Rogers in the room below and set their romance in motion. Similarly, their enchanting duets, `Isn't This a Lovely Day (To Be Caught in the Rain)?' and `Cheek to Cheek', flow directly from the scenario, and even the production number for `Top Hat, White Tie and Tails' opens with Astaire rushing on stage clutching the invitation he's just received from Broderick to join her by the Lido.

Even the dance routines were performed in character and they established a template that Rogers and Astaire would reuse throughout their RKO tenure. Following the inevitable accidental meeting, Fred falls for Ginger at first sight, while she considers him a pest. So, the first dance was a `challenge' number in which Astaire has to prove that there is more to him than meets the eye. But, no sooner has he aroused her curiosity - here by serenading her in a deserted bandstand - than a misunderstanding undoes the good work and he has to `woo to win' all over again. In this instance, the seduction occurs to `Cheek to Cheek', the Oscar-winning highlight of what was Berlin's first screen score. However, a further crossing of wires drives them apart again and they are only reunited during `The Piccolino', which is made all the more deliciously illicit by the fact that Ginger thinks she is still married to the imbecilic Rhodes and is blissfully unaware that their wedding ceremony was conducted in clerical disguise by Horton's brusque valet, Eric Blore.

Few things in cinema look more effortless than Fred`n'Ginger's dance routines. But they were the product of hours of hard work. Astaire usually devised the choreography in tandem with Hermes Pan, who then taught Rogers her steps. But things didn't always go smoothly before the camera and Astaire danced `Cheek to Cheek' in a state of near-apoplectic fury, as the ostrich feathers on Rogers's dress kept detaching and it required countless retakes before the perfectionist was finally content.

It would be wonderful to watch the cut that preview audiences saw, with the censored scene involving a moonlight gondola trip being restored. But Top Hat could hardly be improved upon. Its blend of Jazz Age exuberance and modernist chic evokes a magical monochrome yesteryear that Hollywood has never quite recaptured. And then there's Fred and Ginger, whose poise and elegance fused into a romantic compatibility that will never be surpassed.

Released the following year, Swing Time is an everyday Top Hat, in which the romance is just as glorious, but its smooth Twenties surfaces have been scuffed by Thirties life. Originally entitled I Won't Dance and then Never Gonna Dance, it saw Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers return to Art Deco escapism after the comparative realism of Follow the Fleet (1936). Yet its glamour was restricted to John Harkrider's fabulous nightclubs, as times were so tough that Fred's dancing gambler has to ride the rails and Ginger is grateful for work at Eric Blore's crummy dance school.

Despite opening with a society wedding, as Fred leaves Betty Furness waiting at the altar, Swing Time depicts a bourgeois world where nothing can be taken for granted. Indeed, its little ironies even extend to the songs, as Fred pretends not to be able to dance in `Pick Yourself Up'; Ginger has shampoo in her hair as she's serenaded with the Oscar-winning `The Way You Look Tonight'; and the climactic duet, `Never Gonna Dance', sees Rogers and Astaire drift agonisingly apart, as, they were in fact doing off screen.

Scripted by Allan Scott (who worked on six Astaire-Rogers vehicles) and Howard Lindsay (who had directed Fred on stage in The Gay Divorce), this is essentially a book musical, with the songs being deftly integrated into the screwball storyline. Having worked on Roberta (1935), Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields knew precisely what was expected of them and their tunes dominated the Your Hit Parade chart for weeks.

But, even at the time, Kern's music was considered slightly old-fashioned. So, arranger Robert Russell Bennett and Astaire's rehearsal pianist, Hal Borne, deserve much of the credit for swinging the soundtrack to some of the stars' finest routines.

An inverted challenge song, with Ginger leading, `Pick Yourself Up' bubbles with the energy and confidence that Astaire and Rogers had acquired as partners and which allowed them to attempt both comic steps and audacious lifts with effortless exuberance. `Waltz in Swing Time' represents a moment of pure moonlit magic that glides by as its unexpected intricacies unfold. It serves no narrative purpose, but allows the pair to showcase their athletic, rhythmic genius and irresistible physical chemistry, which recurs in `A Fine Romance' - which Fields and Kern dubbed `a sarcastic love song' - which is sung in a snowy park, with Ginger looking peeved in a fur coat and a bowler-hatted Fred playing the innocent like Stan Laurel.

Finally, `Never Gonna Dance' proved not just the summation of Swing Time, but of Fred`n'Ginger on film. A rare male torch song that's both witty and melancholic, it was an evening-dressed exchange of emotions that only Rogers and Astaire could express. But it was also hard work, with the last 16 bars requiring 47 takes (with Ginger's feet bleeding from around the 25th).

However, audiences had to wait almost 30 minutes for the first song, after an opening montage showing Fred on a lucky streak and then performing a magic act with sidekick Victor Moore to `It's Not on the Cards' was dropped.

But, Astaire eventually got his solo slot and `Bojangles of Harlem' proved to be the most controversial number of his career. It's easy to condemn the use of blackface. But, with affectionate lyrics by Dorothy Fields (who had collaborated with Bill `Bojangles' Robinson on RKO's Hooray for Love, 1935), this was a genuine homage from one great artist to another. Moreover, it was a `pop' ballet that anticipated Minnelli and Kelly, with Astaire using the three giant silhouettes (himself in trick shot) on the screen behind him to provide a link between the minstrel show and cinema, between dance history and his own style.

Yet, despite its musical triumphs, Swing Time did less well commercially than previous Astaire-Rogers outings. Moreover, the critics highlighted the flaws in the derivative plot and bemoaned the frivolous romantic contrivances.

Ginger was also becoming restless, especially as director George Stevens had convinced her that she could become a dramatic star in her own right. Consequently, the duo agreed to take a brief break after their next assignment, Shall We Dance (1937).

George Gershwin had worked with Fred Astaire (Lady, Be Good!, 1924 and Funny Face, 1927) and Ginger Rogers (Girl Crazy, 1930) on Broadway. But he hadn't written a screen score since Fox's undistinguished Delicious in 1931 and he was concerned that he would be responsible for the duo's first flop. Yet, he ended up feeling he'd wasted too many good songs on such moderate singers and was dismayed by how little space director Mark Sandrich accorded gems like `(I've Got) Beginner's Luck' and the Oscar-nominated `They Can't Take That Away from Me'.

But while the songtrack was splendid, Gershwin still had the misfortune to participate in what was considered Fred`n'Ginger's first disappointment.

The box-office takings slipped slightly. Moreover, the critics complained that the comic byplay with Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore was becoming stale and that `the Great White Sets' had grown grandiose. They also detected a little self-indulgence in both the picture's length and its bid to marry art with entertainment. But mostly, they couldn't fathom why Rogers and Astaire opted to dance unconvincingly with Pete Theodore and Harriet Hoctor rather than glide through their customary romantic duets.

Yet, while the plot may be slightly asinine and the routines may have striven for novelty rather than intimacy, Shall We Dance has been unfairly maligned.

Adapted from a story by Lee Loeb and Harold Buchman, and known at various stages as Stepping Toes, Stepping Stones, Watch Your Step and Stepping High, this was Astaire and Gershwin's response to Rodgers and Hart's Broadway hit, On Your Toes (1936), which Fred had rejected as it didn't conform to his screen image. Indeed, Astaire's masquerade as a Russian ballet star more reflected Gershwin's classical-populist ambitions than his own. Yet, the solos, `Slap That Bass' and `Shall We Dance', saw Astaire contrasting jazz hoofing with pseudo-ballet, if only to mock European pomposity and inverted American snobbery.

The slender storyline, which sees Rogers and Astaire deciding to marry in order to get divorced to quash press speculation about their relationship, might have got off to a livelier start had RKO been prepared to spend $55,000 on a Parisian set for `Hi-Ho', in which Pete Peters (aka Petrov) was to have become obsessed with Linda Keene's image on countless billboards.

However, the multiple-Ginger concept was reserved for the finale - even though Busby Berkeley had already employed the identical mask idea on `I Only Have Eyes for You' in Dames (1934). Indeed, Shall We Dance is unusual for the extent of its borrowing, with the flipbook recalling Footlight Parade (1933), the seasickness gags being regurgitated from Anything Goes and the Constructivist engine-room sequence echoing Modern Times (both 1936).

But there was daring originality in the decision to make `They All Laughed' the longest-delayed first dance in the couple's canon (although they had earlier strutted the deck of a transatlantic liner to the mischievous instrumental `Walking the Dog'). Yet, it was well worth the wait, as Fred and Ginger traded steps in a typical challenge routine that culminated in them leaping atop a piano. The rollerskating hi-jinx to `Let's Call the Whole Thing Off' were even more flamboyant, although their effortless ease belied the fact that they took 32 hours to rehearse and 30 takes to complete (during which time the twosome danced over 80 miles).

However, instead of Ginger realising her love for Fred as they danced together, the penny drops as she watches him on stage with second-rate ballerina Harriet Hoctor and the masked chorines in a finale that was clumsily choreographed by Harry Losee (fresh from skater Sonja Henie's Thin Ice, 1937) after RKO failed to entice Leonard Massine.

The action ended with Fred and Ginger together. But rumours that the partnership was under strain were only confirmed when they made A Damsel in Distress (1937) and Vivacious Lady (1938) apart. They would reunite for three more pictures. But this was the last outing in their trademark style and they went their separate ways two years later.

Astaire wasn't sure he had a future in films after splitting with Ginger and even announced his retirement following Yolanda and the Thief (1945), which is long overdue a DVD release. However, his Hollywood exile didn't last long.

According to the cynics, Easter Parade's pre-production was more interesting than the picture itself. Set in 1912 and following the fortunes of a vaudevillian who vows to turn a bar-room chorine into a star after he's dumped by his Broadway-bound partner, it may not have been the Freed Unit's most sophisticated offering. But it's certainly its most polished piece of escapist entertainment and it's doubtful whether Vincente Minnelli could have done a better job than Charles Walters had he not been forced to quit after five days, on the advice of his troubled wife Judy Garland's psychiatrist.

When MGM first announced the project in 1947, its stars were to be Gene Kelly, Kathryn Grayson, Frank Sinatra and Red Skelton. But Judy Garland, Peter Lawford and Jules Munshin were soon drafted in alongside Ann Miller, who replaced Cyd Charisse after she broke her leg.

However, Kelly then fractured his ankle playing touch football (although he told the studio that the accident happened during rehearsals) and Freed briefly considered casting Gene Nelson before persuading the 48 year-old Fred Astaire to come out of retirement.

Having been reassured that filming couldn't be delayed and that Kelly would be incapacitated for several months, Astaire signed up for his fifth collaboration with Irving Berlin - the last being Paramount's Blue Skies (1946), the success of which had persuaded Freed to offer the composer an unprecedented $500,000 fee and a percentage of the profits in return for access to the 800+ tunes in his songbook.

While associate producer Roger Edens selected the standards, Berlin produced a raft of new tunes, including `It Only Happens When I Dance With You', `A Fella With an Umbrella' and `Steppin' Out With My Baby'. However, `I Love You - You Love Him' and `Mister Monotony' were cut from the final print, while Freed took exception to the proposed speciality number `Let's Take an Old-Fashioned Walk' and Berlin replaced it within the hour with `A Couple of Swells'.

Berlin was also invited to share his memories of 1910s showbiz with screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. But Walters (who was directing only his second feature after 1947's Good News) disliked the script's over-reliance on the Pygmalion myth and persuaded Freed to hire Sidney Sheldon to tone down its misanthropy. Ultimately, the storyline bore echoes of For Me and My Gal (1942), but it admirably captured the backstage mood and accommodated the Berlin numbers with seamless ease.

Despite the fact that she had to rejoin Minnelli 17 times for retakes on The Pirate, Garland revelled in the project and made a delightful job of such solos as `Better Luck Next Time' and oldies like `I Love a Piano', `Snooky Ookums' and `When That Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam' in the marvellous montage sequence with Astaire.

Fred also excelled in his duets with Garland (`A Couple of Swells' and `Easter Parade') and Miller (`It Only Happens When I Dance With You'), while his spotlights on `Drum Crazy' and `Steppin' Out With My Baby' showed no signs of his 13-month absence from the screen. Indeed, in the latter routine (which referenced Top Hat, 1935 and Carefree, 1938) he danced a pseudo-ballet, a sultry blues and a zesty jitterbug with three different female partners before launching into tap solo that culminated in a slo-mo sequence that took four weeks to edit.

Yet, for once, Astaire was upstaged by Miller's explosive rendition of `Shaking the Blues Away', which demonstrated why MGM had recruited her as a replacement for Eleanor Powell.

Easter Parade cost $2,503,654 and grossed $6,803,000. It earned Edens and conductor Johnny Green Academy Awards for the Best Scoring of a Musical Picture. But, most significantly, it relaunced Fred Astaire's career and established the character of the teacher-initiator who falls for his protégé that he would also play in The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), Daddy Long Legs (1955), Funny Face and Silk Stockings (both 1957).

His next film, however, took him on a trip down memory lane. The Band Wagon (1953) has much in common with Singin' in the Rain (1952). Each showcases a catalogue of popular standards and features a song-and-dance man, who not only emerges from a potential career crisis with his reputation enhanced, but who also finds love with his leading lady. But whereas Gene Kelly's confident classic was an optimistic paean to talking pictures, Fred Astaire's underrated homage to the stage was shrouded in a pessimism that implied that the days of old-time show business were numbered.

One reason for this shift in tone was the imposition of draconian economies on the Freed Unit by the new MGM regime. With costs rising, attendances falling and tastes changing, the post-Meyer studio could no longer afford to bankroll musicals studded with spectacular set-pieces - even though Freed was the only consistently profitable producer on the Culver City lot.

But the end-of-era malaise was intensified by the fact that Astaire's contract was about to lapse and that this backstage throwback was evidently his valedictory swan song. Indeed, this sense of finality inspired Betty Comden and Adolph Green to lace their screenplay with biographical details and satirical allusions, much as they had done in The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), another showbiz comedy with Astairean overtones that examined the clash between art and entertainment.

Thus, Tony Hunter is Astaire à clef, while Lily and Lester Marton (Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant) are based on the scenarists themselves. However, the origins of Jeffrey Cordova (Jack Buchanan) are more obscure and he is either an amalgam of Orson Welles, José Ferrer and stage designer Norman Bel Geddes or a parody of a condescending British stage knight or Vincente Minnelli, depending on which anecdote you believe.

Despite its ready sources, the shooting script took some contriving, however, as Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz had written the majority of their 400+ songs for revues. So, while they were supremely sentimental summations of yesteryear, they were less useful in developing character or plot.

However, five songs were retained from the Astaires' 1931 Broadway original, while eight more were imported from other Schwartz-Dietz shows and given diegetic purposes. `By Myself' and `A Shine on Your Shoes' were used, for example, to establish Tony's mindset as he returns washed-up from Hollywood, while `Dancing in the Dark' suggests his growing affection for ballerina Gabrielle Gerard (Cyd Charisse), after their initial antipathy at rehearsals.

But the majority of the show-stoppers were held back for the grand finale, which Minnelli staged with typical ingenuity so that obviously theatrical settings became irresistibly cinematic, thanks to his intuitive use of light, colour, space and design.

In `New Sun in the Sky', the moving camera gloriously framed Charisse against a blaze of red and gold swirls, while subtle specks of light were employed to enliven Fabray's rendition of `Louisiana Hayride'. The distortion of perspective that allows Astaire, Buchanan and Fabray to play babies in `Triplets' is equally dexteous, while Astaire and Buchanan's pairing on `I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan' genially evolves into the soft-shoe equivalent of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton's nostalgic masterclass in Limelight (1952).

Yet, Minnelli surpassed himself with the `Girl Hunt' ballet. Devised by Alan Jay Lerner after a Life magazine article on Mickey Spillane and choreographed by Michael Kidd (who had just done Guys and Dolls on Broadway), this pulp reverie recalled Astaire's persona in Yolanda and the Thief (1945) and became his favourite routine. But its noirish atmosphere also chimed in with the picture's recurring references to Germanic culture (particularly Freud, operetta and Expressionism).

Yet this mix of high- and lowbrow culture is also crucial to the dualism at The Band Wagon's core. By championing tradition and collaboration over modernity and megalomania, it laid itself open to accusations of anti-elitism, as Cordova's latterday Faust is exposed as pretentious tosh, while Hunter's triumph proves that nothing can beat good old-fashioned entertainment.

But even though Comden and Green were intent on gently lampooning Minnelli's stylistic preoccupations and Rodgers and Hammerstein's predilection for social message, the picture's rousing climax epitomises the lyrics of `That's Entertainment' by demonstrating that whether it's old or new, classical or popular, every form of art and performance is valid, providing it pleases the public.

Moreover, it also confirms that class never goes out of style and that as Cordova suggests there really is `no difference between the magic rhythms of Bill Shakespeare's immortal verse and the magic rhythms of Bill Robinson's immortal feet'.

However, The Band Wagon's intelligent intimacy and formal, thematic and emotional richness failed either to lure lapsed patrons away from their new television sets or to impress younger cinema-goers eager for widescreen extravaganza. Consequently, it grossed only $5,655,505 on its $2,169,120 budget and convinced Front Offices around Hollywood that the musical's future lay primarily in the transfer of proven hits from Broadway.

The success of this old stager persuaded Paramount to revisit another Astaire classic and, considering the influence it exerted on auteur cinema, Funny Face (1957), was actually a remarkable example of good old-fashioned Hollywood teamwork.

In 1951, Leonard Gershe was forced to abandon his plans to stage Wedding Bells on Broadway. However, the story of a photographer playing Pygmalion to his model (which had been inspired by Richard Avedon and ??) appealed to MGM producer Roger Edens, who bought the property for director Stanley Donen. But Edens disliked Vernon Duke and Ogden Nash's score and did a deal with Warner Bros. whereby they would release the rights to George and Ira Gershwin's 1927 Fred Astaire show, Funny Face, in return for Donen being loaned out for The Pajama Game.

However, Astaire was then contracted to Paramount for Papa's Delicate Condition and the same the studio had no intention of lending his preferred co-star, Audrey Hepburn, to anybody. So, in a unique gesture of munificence, Arthur Freed not only allowed Edens and Donen to transfer to Paramount for the duration, but he also threw musical director Adolph Deutsch, arranger Conrad Salinger, choreographer Eugene Loring and cinematographer Ray June into the bargain.

Paramount art directors Hal Pereira and George W. Davis, SFX artist John P. Fulton and costume designer Givenchy all made major contributions, as did Avedon himself, who acted as visual consultant. But this undervalued delight still drips with MGM chic and copious references to the studio's finest hours.

It's essentially a reworking of An American in Paris, with the Gershwin score providing the constant and the contrasts coming between Astaire and Gene Kelly, photography/painting, real locations/ soundstages, and Donen and Vincente Minnelli.

There are also echoes of Singin' in the Rain, with Kay Thompson's magazine editor (who was based on Harper's Bazaar's Carmel Snow) recalling Millard Mitchell's studio chief, Astaire coaxing his models like a silent film director, and model Dovima recalling Jean Hagen's superficial actress, who loves the glamour and prestige of her trade, but hasn't the soul fully to participate in its creativity. Consequently, she's replaced by Hepburn's fresh-faced gamine, who shares Debbie Reynolds's passion, independence and eagerness for new experiences.

However, as with The Band Wagon, the film is also a recapitulation of Astaire's career that allows for plenty of self-reflexive analysis. The `Funny Face' sequence, for example, comments on his passage from RKO monochrome to VistaVision Technicolor, while also exploring the very process of making pictures and star myths - with Astaire photographing, developing, projecting and printing Hepburn's portrait before comparing the image with the reality (which is itself merely an illusion on a cinema screen).

This emphasis on modernity and technology, while also referencing and reverencing an accepted iconography, recurs during the `Bonjour, Pareee!' sequence - which recalls both Rouben Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight and Kelly and Donen's On the Town and It's Always Fair Weather (1955) - and the photo shoot around the City of Light, which not only showcases the moving image's unique ability to capture a time, a place and a personality in a manner that's both kinetic and artistic, but which also celebrates film technique from the `city symphonies' of the silent montage era to the full-colour, widescreen, stereophonic present. Moreover, it also anticipates the strategies that would be employed by the nouvelle vague to break with the literate narrative linearity of commercial cinema.

Indeed, Donen's use of style is exceedingly ambitious throughout - from its opening emphasis on pink, through the darkroom dance illuminated by a single red bulb to the use of soft focus, split-screens, freeze frames, negative footage, monochrome and colours that seem to dance as vibrantly as Astaire.

The picture is also studded with parodies, with Empathicalism joshing Existentialism, `Bonjour, Paree!' lampooning Cinerama travelogues and `Basal Metabolism' poking gentle fun at both danse modèrne and Kelly's dream ballet in An American in Paris. Donen even utilised the poor Parisian weather to comment on the artificial perfection of industrial film-making.

Furthermore, the equation of fashion with film makes the claim of Hepburn's bookstore clerk that cinema and photography each represent `a chichi and unrealistic approach to economics' all the more bitingly satirical, as by dressing her in beatnik black, Donen alludes to the European arthouse pictures that were becoming increasingly trendy in America's major urban centres and, thus provides a cultural counterpoint to both the Hollywood blockbuster and the lie that books alone can provide intellectual sustenance.

However, the picture is occasionally guilty of inverted snobbery, as Michel Auclair's philosopher is concerned with ideas not images and, thus, he has to be exposed as both pretentious and fraudulent. Hepburn, therefore, comes to learn more about Empathicalism from Astaire, as he understands everything about her mind, body and spirit. Indeed, having proved he's mentally attuned to her during `Let's Kiss and Make Up', he offers physical proof of their compatibility during the exquisite `He Loves and She Loves' sequence in the Chantilly churchyard.

Somewhat going over the heads of contemporary American audiences, Funny Face lost money on its $4 million budget. But its cinematic inspiration has since proved priceless. Moreover, it demonstrated that even at the age of 58, Astaire was as innovative, lithe and elegant as ever.