The Audrey Hepburn Story

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Movie
Original title The Audrey Hepburn Story
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2000
length 175 minutes
Rod
Director Steven Robman
script Marsha Norman
production Jennifer Love Hewitt
Steven Robman
Kay Hoffman
music Lawrence Shragge
camera Pierre Letarte
cut Peter B. Ellis
occupation

The Audrey Hepburn Story is a film biography made by Steven Robman in 1999 for the American television station ABC and first broadcast on March 27, 2000 with Jennifer Love Hewitt in the title role of the (adult) film actress Audrey Hepburn . The film has not yet been shown in the Federal Republic of Germany.

action

The film opens with Henry Mancini's legendary Moon River melody, while a yellow taxi pulls up in front of the New York jeweler Tiffany's . It gets out: Audrey Hepburn in the role of Holly Golightly in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's . She bites into a piece of Danish pastry with powdered sugar and begins to cough heavily. "Cut!" Shouts the stressed director Edwards , the scene is ruined. Audrey Hepburn is currently shooting this most successful work of her film career (1960) and looks back on her life so far during the forced break from filming, during which Tiffany writer Truman Capote , who looks bored on the set, gossips about Hepburn's acting "performance".

Brussels 1935. Audrey had an affluent upper-class childhood. However, her parents have become estranged and often quarrel. Her father, a banker, does business with the Nazis, her mother is appalled. After the parents split up, the mother and the girl went to England, where Audrey was given ballet lessons at a dance school in Kent . Shortly after the start of the Second World War , Audrey's mother took her daughter to the neutral Netherlands. Her father, who wanted to come with her, was prevented from leaving the country by the British authorities because of his close business ties with Adolf Hitler's German Empire . In 1940, mother and daughter were surprised by the invasion of the armed forces in Arnhem . After learning that her uncle Willem had been shot by the Germans, the young girl finally joined the anti-Nazi resistance and was used as a courier several times.

The war is over. Back in London, Audrey continued her ballet lessons in 1947, but had to drop out of training due to a lack of talent. Three years later, she received her first offers as an actress from the film and was initially mostly cast as a cigarette girl. She broke off an engagement to the wealthy businessman James Hanson as her career took off. In 1951 she was hired by Colette for the role of Gigi on Broadway and discovered by Hollywood the following year . Her first US production, A Heart and a Crown , was a huge success and earned her an Oscar . A little later, she falls in love with her co-star William Holden while filming Sabrina . But this relationship is already breaking up: Holden, who is still married, says he can no longer have children.

Eventually Audrey and her colleague Mel Ferrer fall in love, get married and move to Switzerland. When Audrey was making the film The Story of a Nun in the Congo , she began to be interested in the misery of children in the Third World - the basis for her later UNICEF work. During the filming of Unforgiving , the pregnant actress has a serious accident when she falls from a horse. She loses her unborn child. At the hospital, she receives a letter from her father that she had not seen for nearly twenty years. In the letter she learns that he has written to her many times. Audrey confronts her mother with this information and learns that she has withheld his letters from her for years in order, as she says, to protect Audrey.

Recovered, Audrey visits her father, who now leads a hermit life with his dog Otto. But the conversation with her father is cool, he shows little empathy for his daughter, let alone for the loss of her baby. Audrey goes back to Switzerland disappointed and tells her mother that she can now understand why she had withheld the letters. Eventually Audrey and Mel have their long-awaited baby. One day Audrey Hepburn, who actually wanted to take a break for a while, received an offer for a new film. Her husband Mel has to convince her to do so. She assumes the film will be called Tiffany's Breakfast .

Production notes

Probably in order not to expose themselves to the accusation of having dealt too freely with the facts in Hepburn's life, the producers introduced the film with the following words: "The following dramatization of events in the life of Audrey Hepburn is based on published accounts."

On closer inspection, this biography covers only 25 years of Audrey Hepburn, from 1935 to 1960.

With The Audrey Hepburn Story and the 1999 television series New York Life - Finally in Life! Hewitt, just 20 years old, started a second career as a producer with her own company Love Spell.

Born in Texan, Hewitt needed special language training in order to learn at least approximately an elitist British accent for this role. The British accent of Emmy Rossum , who was born in New York, is far more natural.

Hewitt sings the title Moon River - unplugged - during a break from shooting at Tiffany's for a guitar solo.

The costume designers struggled to match Hewitt's large bust to match the look of the much shorter Hepburns.

At the end of the film, Audrey Hepburn's further life is reported in a few sentences, and some of her other films (including My Fair Lady , Charade and Wait until it's dark ) are listed. The last recordings show old Audrey Hepburn, how she is committed to children in the third world.

criticism

The reviews of this ambitious project by the young actress Jennifer Love Hewitt were all in all very mixed. Sometimes the static direction was criticized, sometimes the acting performances (Hewitts and her colleagues) and sometimes the seemingly too listless sequence of important events in Hepburn's life. It was also criticized that the facts in Audrey Hepburn's life in this biopic were handled carelessly and that some aspects highlighted in this film - such as Audrey's lifelong search for her father - were overdramatized.

Entertainment Weekly judged: “Cannily surrounding herself with a cast of impersonators who are mostly much worse than herself, she turns re-creations of Hepburn touchstones such as Broadway's Gigi, Roman Holiday, and Breakfast at Tiffany's into a Party of One - in any given scene, it's only Hewitt whom the camera guides you to watch. The result is a corny, curious, but achingly sincere and fitfully enjoyable TV movie. "

In the TV Guide you can read:

“While Hewitt may lack Hepburn's incandescent je ne sais quoi, possessing instead the rather more pedestrian quelquechose de TV star, she nonetheless acquits herself admirably throughout her impossible task, disgracing neither herself nor Hepburn's memory. Due to Hewitt's thespian limitations, however, this generally efficient tribute pays short shrift to Hepburn's later life. Thus, we don't relive the mixed blessing of MY FAIR LADY, nor do we experience her tireless humanitarian efforts on behalf of UNICEF (pre-shadowed by her activities as a teenage resistance worker). Instead, we get snippets of Hepburn's movie hits, backstage gossip, and the chance to watch Hewitt play Audrey dress-up. "

- TV guide

The trade journal Variety found mild words for Hewitt's achievement: “Love Hewitt benefits greatly from the presence of the two younger Audreys, whose winning portrayals give her depth and likability. Love Hewitt is handed a ball that's already rolling and she handles herself gracefully by staying consistently in character; she displays an onscreen maturity that's far more nuanced than the tortured looks and giggles that pass for acting on Fox's 'Party of Five' and 'Time of Your Life'. "and also gave a friendly verdict on the directing:" She is ably handled by director Steve Robman, whose credits happen to include 'Party of Five'. Here he gets a wide-open canvas that subjects itself to the strait-jacket of history only during the 'Tiffany's' scenes. Otherwise, he moves the action with a steady eye for pace and drama. "

The Time magazine was: "Call it the Aud Hep story. Even with three hours at its disposal, this film ends halfway through the star's career and life, with the making of breakfast at Tiffany's. No My Fair Lady or Charade; nothing of the work for UNICEF. Still, what's onscreen fascinates because of the life itself and, at bottom, because of the dead-on impersonation by Jennifer Love Hewitt. Hepburn's accent; her posture; her chin-down, eyebrows-up way with a line - Hewitt has it all, and charm to boot. Delicious. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Audrey Hepburn Story (review) in Entertainment Weekly
  2. ^ The Audrey Hepburn Story (review) in TV Guide
  3. ^ A b The Audrey Hepburn Story (review) in Variety
  4. ↑ The Audrey Hepburn Story (review) in Time Magazine