My Fair Lady
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 My Favorite This is my favorite movie ever. They did a good job with it two. The extra stuff stinks so buy it for the movie. Probably the best movie of all time. Excellent cast and wonderful music make this superb movie one of the best of all time. The Oh so true play based on the English social class distinction, as it used to be, and scenes and characters in Covent Garden just add richness to the whole story. Featuring the characters from the Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market, of former times, together with the opera goers from the Covent Garden Opera House adds highlight to the cultural extreams that existed, "shoulder to shoulder" for so long. The truly beautiful Audry Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfred Hyde-White, Gladys Cooper and company, give us the richness and romanticism of a bygone era.......just wonderful.  A classic! This movie is sure to be a favorite for anyone who loves Audrey Hepburn or who enjoys musicals. It is very entertaining!  Loved the Lipstick; Hated the Pig Loved the lipstick; hated the pig. "My Fair Lady" is an elaborate wedding cake; it offers all the rewards and punishments of that overblown confection. The opening credits alone stuff you till you can't move: under white titles, lush, buttercream peonies, daisies and carnations lounge as if they were odalisques in a harem. You just want to bury your face in their petals and drown in scent. And then, after he's proved he can wow you with white alone, Academy Award winning director George Cukor pops your eyes: a magenta gown and exotic, feathered headdress bedeck a woman descending a stair. She and the vintage luxury car she enters, before driving out of the movie forever, are onscreen for mere seconds. No top hat is without its luster; no cobblestone lane without the dawn- or dusk- echoing heelstrike of a lovelorn swain. The elaborate gold wallpaper in Higgins' home writhes like some Edwardian opium eater's hallucination. This is juxtaposed with grey housekeeper Mrs. Pearce's (Mona Washbourne) bosomy officiousness. The Ascot scene juxtaposes hysterical lyrics -- "Pulses rushing! Faces flushing! Heartbeats speed up! I have never been so keyed up!" with the funniest parody of British stiff upper lips. And the Transylvanian Queen is played by a real Baroness, Bina Rothschild. The songs exemplify the best of Broadway: "Wouldn't it be Loverly?" "The Street Where You Live," "I Could have Danced All Night," "The Rain in Spain," "I've grown Accustomed to Her Face." Audrey Hepburn is as close to a fairy princess as any star who's graced us. She is beautiful and she's got soul and intelligence to burn. The attention she brings to one small scene -- she asks Freddy's mother to compensate her for Freddy's having trod on her violets -- her body performs a little ballet; her face broadcasts exactly who Eliza Doolittle is -- a girl of poverty, decency, ambition, and wit -- set the screen a-sparkle. "Sexy Rexy" earned his nickname by running through women like I run through kitchen sponges; there were two suicides. Harrison *is* Higgins (In the same way that he was also Captain Gregg, King Mongkut, Julius Cesar and Pope Julius. He really owned these roles.) Harrison is entirely believable, even though his performance is stagey, larger than life, and his dialogue frequently over-the-top. "My Fair Lady" was based on George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," which took its title from a sublime Greek myth. Sculptor, and misogynist, Pygmalion sees no need for a woman in his life. Perhaps thanks to unconscious motivation, he carves a woman: Galatea. Over time, the proud bachelor metamorphosizes into a humble supplicant. Please, he begs of love goddess Aphrodite, grant me this one boon: allow my Galatea to come to life; allow me to love her. Just as his hard arrogance melts, and he resurrects to a new life of love, Galatea's marble melts, and she lives to love her Pygmalion. Shaw appropriated the title, but he violated the myth, perhaps in self-exculpation. Shaw was excessively attached to his mother; he never had sex with his wife, and he threatened his mistresses. Shaw didn't allow *his* creation, Higgins, to overcome his problem with women, to experience on the page or the stage what eluded arrogant Shaw in life. One definition of "main character": it's the character who changes. The title of this myth is "Pygmalion," the name of the sculptor. It's *his* journey that has made this tale poignant to two plus millennia of fans. Where there is life, there is change. Death rejects change. Shaw's Pygmalion, Higgins, may as well be dead. It is a convention of Romantic movies that the lead couple "meet cute." They do, in "My Fair Lady." Language scholar Henry Higgins is about to travel to India to meet scholar Colonel Pickering, and Colonel Pickering is traveling to India to meet Higgins. In London, they have a star-crossed meeting. Higgins' eyes twinkle when he looks at Pickering. He is endlessly affectionate to, appreciative of, and polite with Colonel Pickering. Eliza? Higgins treats her, from start to finish, with utter contempt, and more than a little softcore S&M. He denies her food. He shoves marbles into her mouth and forces her to attempt to recite. She struggles; she can't; she swallows a marble. Higgins shoves more in her. Ha, ha, ha. There are websites that cater to this sort of kink. Higgins, in a very grim scene, calls Eliza an "insect," a "creature." By the end of the movie, when Eliza is in Higgins' presence, she keeps silent till spoken to, and looks at the floor. And he looks, not only old enough to be her father, but perhaps her grandfather. When Eliza makes her two breakthroughs -- the "Rain in Spain" scene and the "Embassy ball" scene, Higgins doesn't so much as look at Eliza; he celebrates passionately with -- Pickering. Higgins doesn't say, "I think *you've* got it" to Eliza, he says, "I think *she's* got it" to Pickering. After the "Spain" scene, Higgins interrupts his arm-in-arm ascent of the stairs, to bed, with Pickering, to playact dressing Pickering up in a gown; later he says that Eliza's Ascot gown doesn't fit because he and Pickering bought it together, without Eliza. Harrison and Hepburn have zero chemistry; even in still photos. Harrison looks overcome with contempt and distaste; she looks terrified. Sure, Higgins admits, "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face." Of course. Eliza knows where his slippers are. In the end, the writing is so phony and transparent you want to FedEx Shaw to the National Organization of Women. Eliza accepts an unchanged relationship with an unchanged Higgins. Uh, huh. We believe that. Not. Imagine how fine this film could have been had we had a scene where we see Higgins undergo the change that rocked Pygmalion's world, and some of our own, as well, when we finally found love. | |||||||||||||
