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On Audrey Hepburn
An Opinionated Guide
by Steven Cohan
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Book Presentation:
• Provides an original take on fashion in her films and shows how it was key to her popularity
• Focuses on Hepburn's abilities and craft as an actress
• Offers a substantive and critical analysis of her “Cinderella” films as a discernible cycle
• Argues that her striking success and popularity as a movie star was not only due to her unique physical features but to specific factors of postwar culture in the 1950s
Why should Audrey Hepburn matter today? This lively and engaging book revises the contemporary view of Hepburn that sees her primarily as a fashion icon and style guru, frozen in images from Breakfast at Tiffany's and My Fair Lady. Author Steven Cohan argues that her films, more than her biography or her likeness in stock images and magazine photos, are essential to understanding both her importance as one of the all-time major stars to emerge in Hollywood after World War II and her lasting fame in the 21st century.
On Audrey Hepburn examines the key elements—her expressive face, her distinctive voice, her unorthodox body-that contributed to her persona and led to her charismatic presence onscreen. While pointing to the many contradictions inhering in her star image, Cohan emphasizes the liminality Hepburn represented, demonstrating how her characters' mischief, intelligence, and desiring supplied the primary motor for the Cinderella plots, resisted the films' patriarchal template and closures, and complicated her asymmetrical casting opposite older male stars.
Similarly, Hepburn's close relation with designer Hubert de Givenchy, which established her identification with haute couture, enhanced her movement onscreen, offering a pathway through spectacle for viewer identification with her energy and agency. With Hepburn in Givenchy on screen, Cohan argues, fashion worked as a transformative event for her characters. On Audrey Hepburn further looks at how, playing a woman threatened with deception and murder in thrillers, Hepburn reversed the conventional role of women in this genre through her strong female characters who confront and deal with danger on their own terms. Finally, the book examines Hepburn's skill as actress, considering her expert timing, use of props, facial and vocal expressions, interaction with other actors in an ensemble, and the overall nuance with which she developed complex characterizations.
On Audrey Hepburn is an entertaining and insightful guide to this star through her films, reminding readers why she was so immediately popular after her breakout roles in Roman Holiday and Sabrina, why she had such a crucial influence on women's fashions, and why she received so much acclaim and award recognition as an actress in the US and abroad.
About the Author:
Steven Cohan, Dean's Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Syracuse University Steven Cohan is Dean's Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Syracuse University. He is the author of nine books and an internationally known expert on Hollywood film. He has also served as Professor of English at Syracuse University, where he created the film and screen studies program, and as President of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
Press Reviews:
"A truly delightful, insightful, and eloquently written exploration of a star whose complexity, talent, and dynamism as a performer are finally given their due. Like the charming and elegant Hepburn herself, Steven Cohan's Audrey compels our attention." - Julie Grossman, author of The Femme Fatale
"Steven Cohan's absorbing take on Audrey Hepburn moves beyond the little black dress to her rich and wide-ranging career, rediscovering the star as a highly skilled, culturally significant actress. A fascinating journey through the impact of voice and body on Hepburn's performances, and characters who use fashion to transform themselves and their worlds, Cohan's book is as endlessly surprising as the complex vision of modern femininity Hepburn imprinted on the screen." - Karen McNally, author of When Frankie Went to Hollywood: Frank Sinatra and American Male Identity and The Stardom Film: Creating the Hollywood Fairy Tale
"Steven Cohan's insightful and personal reassessment of Audrey Hepburn asks us to think anew not only about her stardom and performances but also about how we approach the study of stars more generally. This is a pleasurable and a provocative guide to the career of one of Hollywood's most iconic stars." - Kristen Hatch, author of Shirley Temple and the Performance of Girlhood
"Though his analyses are often bogged down by dense passages of summary, he does add a fresh perspective on Hepburn's acting, arguing that it 'now speaks to those contemporary viewers like me, who understand the artifice of genders, how masculinity and femininity are neither monolithic nor organic but are cultural constructs and performances.'" - Kirkus
See the publisher website: Oxford University Press
See the complete filmography of Audrey Hepburn on the website: IMDB ...
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> On a related topic:
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