"Funny Girl"

She has personal heartache, too, of course: She falls for a ne'er-do-well aristocratic gambler type, Nick Arnstein (Omar Sharif), and loves him with such unwavering devotion that she can barely see his faults. Sharif, fine and waxen, has often been criticized as a dopey match for Streisand's off-the-planet Fanny, but he's really the perfect foil for her. He provides the movie's essential visual and psychic acoustics: He's a plain but not displeasing surface for Streisand's brilliance to bounce against. Her bold beauty, so challenging in its directness, shows up the sleepy blandness of his merely handsome features. (Apparently, advance press photos of an on-screen kiss between the Egyptian-born Sharif and Streisand drew rumblings of displeasure from an Egyptian magazine. "You think Cairo was upset?" Streisand wisecracked at the time. "You should've seen the letter I got from my Aunt Rose!")

In "Funny Girl," Streisand works from the heart and the diaphragm -- for her, the two are indistinguishable. The show's songs, by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, are big enough to stand up to her, but barely. Much of her singing -- particularly in the famous "Don't Rain on My Parade" sequence, beloved by drag queens and would-be princesses of all persuasions everywhere -- sounds like a statement of arrival. There's joy and triumph in it, and the requisite amount of ego, yet it doesn't feel boastful or bloatedly hollow. Maybe that's partly because her voice isn't just big; it's vast, with corners and hollows and shady corridors that give it a kind of spicy delicacy, even at its most assertive.

Although not all great singers make great actors, it sometimes happens that people who know how to interpret songs also have a knack for drama, knowing how to layer strata of emotional complexity even when they're not singing. Streisand is that kind of actor: Her singing and her acting seem to spring from the same place, although there's nothing monotonous or predictable about either of them. When she gazes into Sharif's eyes, or when she does something that makes him laugh, there's a look that passes fleetingly across her face, a mix of anxiety, vague insecurity but most of all, joyousness in the possibility that any man could see her as beautiful. It's a cross between confidence and vulnerability that's hard for an actress to pull off, but Streisand hits the note perfectly.

And her greatest moment of acting, I think, is also the picture's strongest musical number. She begins her rendition of the standard "My Man" -- it's the song she sings after she's said goodbye to Sharif -- sounding rushed and uncertain, as if she just might take it into the same territory Billie Holiday took it, riffing on the same mood of resignation mingled with self-denigration. But as she moves through the song, Streisand -- guided less by the intrinsic meaning of the words than by something deep inside her -- steers it in a completely different direction. Instead of a tender, tearful affirmation of love for a man who's just no good, she makes the song into a powerhouse of self-determination -- as if it were possible to love somebody into good behavior. It isn't, of course. But in the space of the song, line by line, Streisand punctures every potential doubt, as if she were popping a series of overblown balloons. By the end, there's nothing to do but believe she can work the impossible just by the sheer nerve of her voice.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

You may have noticed that I haven't yet said anything about the Nose.

Though I, personally, have not been blessed with one, I have always loved big noses, on men and on women. On men, they spell the promise of great sex -- and if that sounds vaguely irrational, well, it is; on women, they seem both queenly and a little funny, a combination I always think of as terrific. My preference isn't purely aesthetic: I also associate larger-than-average noses with the best qualities of all the Jewish people I've loved most in my life. I'm not trying to reinforce Semitic stereotypes here. It's just that when you're with someone who's making you laugh, or who's opening you up to something you've never thought about before, part of your joy comes from taking in the whole of the face before you, and the nose is right at the center.

If I had the power to decree what people could and couldn't do with their noses, I would frown on rhinoplasty in all but the most extreme cases. Why would anyone want to leave her character on the cutting-room floor? If the gods give you such a gift, heaven forbid you should go messing with it. And I would point to Streisand, whose magnificent nose remains untouched to this day, as an example of a woman who knows the worth of a good schnoz. Streisand's nose is a presence by itself, a feature that lends her face both gravitas and good humor; it's an all-or-nothing nose, an ode to grandness, a reminder that the best things in life are never done in half-measures.

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