My Fair Lady (1964)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

George Cukor

Writers:

Alan Jay Lerner (book)
George Bernard Shaw (play)

Release Date:

25 December 1964 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Family | Musical | Romance

Tagline:

The loverliest motion picture of them all!

Plot:

A misogynistic and snobbish phonetics professor agrees to a wager that he can take a flower girl and make her presentable in high society.

Plot Keywords:

Flower Girl | Professor | Wager | Linguist | High Society

Awards:

Won 8 Oscars. Another 13 wins & 10 nominations

Cast

Audrey Hepburn	...	Eliza Doolittle
Rex Harrison	...	Professor Henry Higgins
Stanley Holloway	...	Alfred P. Doolittle
Wilfrid Hyde-White	...	Colonel Hugh Pickering
Gladys Cooper	...	Mrs. Higgins
Jeremy Brett	...	Freddy Eynsford-Hill
Theodore Bikel	...	Zoltan Karpathy
Mona Washbourne	...	Mrs. Pearce
Isobel Elsom	...	Mrs. Eynsford-Hill
John Holland	...	Butler

Runtime:

170 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo (35 mm magnetic prints) | DTS (re-release) | Dolby Digital (re-release) | Mono (16 mm prints) | Mono (35 mm optical prints) | 70 mm 6-Track (RCA Sound Recording) (70 mm prints)

Certification:

Iceland:L | USA:Approved (PCA #20570) (original rating) | USA:G (re-rating) (1970) | South Korea:All | Brazil:Livre | Canada:PG (video rating) | New Zealand:G | Argentina:Atp | Australia:G | Chile:TE | Finland:S | Sweden:Btl | UK:U | West Germany:12

Filming Locations:

Backlot, Warner Brothers Burbank Studios - 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

Musical theater writers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had attempted to adapt George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" as a musical long before Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, but had abandoned the project as unadaptable. Rodgers and Hammerstein felt that Shaw's style of writing intellectual dialog and the emotionless character of Henry Higgins did not lend themselves to a musical. Lerner and Lowe overcame these problems by leaving Shaw's dialogue largely intact, and working under the notion that Higgins must be played by a great actor, not a great singer. Thus, they wrote the role especially for Rex Harrison, and adopted the idea that Higgins should not sing outright, but talk on pitch, less an expression of emotions than ideas.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Eliza is singing "I Could Have Danced All Night," the maids are furiously trying to dress her into the nightgown. Her right sleeve is tied but the left remains untied until she exits the bathroom where it's tied.

Quotes:

Eliza Doolittle: [singing] I shall not feel alone without you, I can stand on my own without you. So go back in your shell, I can do bloody well without...
Professor Henry Higgins: [singing] By George, I really did it, I did it, I did it! I said I'd make a woman and indeed, I did. I knew that I could do it, I knew it, I knew it! I said I'd make a woman and succeed, I did!
[speaking]
Professor Henry Higgins: Eliza, you're magnificent. Five minutes ago, you were a millstone around my neck, and now you're a tower of strength, a consort battleship. I like you this way.
[pause]
[...]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "30 Rock: The Fighting Irish (#1.17)" (2007)

Soundtrack:

Ascot Gavotte

A musical with a brain as well as a heart

There's a lot of negative things been said about Audrey Hepburn's interpretation of the role of Eliza. Perhaps she's not ideal in the earliest scenes of the movie - her "dirtiness" is never quite believable - but it has to be said that despite this smallish drawback she still glows, and makes an amazing Eliza overall.

The reason for this is simple; Audrey Hepburn brings her "own spark of divine fire", (to quote Higgins) to the role and her vulnerability, mixed with her sweet, naive charm and even her wonderfully juvenile pettishness shown in "Just You Wait" all prove what a talented actress she really is. For an example of this, just watch Eliza's facial expression at Ascot, when she realises her opportunity to demonstrate her new-found mastery of the English tongue - sweetly hilarious.

MFL has been criticized as being too romanticized, too overblown. I disagree; musicals are suposed to be lavish affairs, and none pull it off quite so well as "My Fair Lady" does. It's a momentous film but it has its subtle points: watch the way in which Eliza's eyes are centred on Higgins when she enters at the ball, and the way in which the two of them stare at each other for a few seconds at the top of the stairs a few moments later.

It musn't be overlooked that, thanks to its being based on a Bernard Shaw play, "My Fair Lady" has what the great majority of musicals lack: a deeper meaning and something really quite profound to say.

The actor in the role of Colonel Pickering is a little weak, but it must be said that Rex Harrison IS Henry Higgins. In a lot of ways (in fact, in most ways) Higgins has an objectionable personality: rude, snobbish, impatient and even misogynistic, but somehow Rex Harrison pulls it all off and makes us like Higgins without betraying the character. As to romance, his song "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" is an ode to the kind of love which sneaks up on you. Overall, this movie is romantic, but not too sentimental. It has just enough romance to be dramatically fulfilling, but it never becomes soppy or mawkish. The word "love" is never mentioned at all and the two leads never even kiss. The famous end sequence is perfect and does the movie justice; after all, a big happy bow tied around a perfect romance at the end would simply not fit with everything we have learned about the two protagonists.