Not so much a film as a taped version of the stage play, "My Fair Lady" is about as cinematic as a community theatre production, yet it has much to recommend it anyway.
For one, the Lerner and Loewe score is timeless, and it sounds great in the film. It's also nice that it's captured in its entirety---no songs from the stage version were dropped, not even superfluous numbers like Freddie's reprise of "On the Street Where You Live." The film also captures the performance of Rex Harrison in the role of Henry Higgins, a role he created on stage. Like Yul Brynner in "The King and I," Rex Harrison so perfectly embodied Higgins that any actor who's ever attempted to play him since has to pretty much impersonate Harrison or risk the disappointed wrath of audiences. And there are also some colorful character actors who do much with smaller roles, notably Wilfred Hyde-White as Col. Pickering, Stanley Holloway, who gets a couple of showstoppers as Alfred Dolittle, and Gladys Cooper, with maybe five minutes of screen time and no songs, but who nevertheless runs away with a couple of scenes of her own as Higgins' acerbic mother.
The weakest link in this cast, it pains me to say, is Audrey Hepburn. As much as I've liked her in other things, she simply isn't convincing as Eliza Dolittle. And her lip synching is atrocious--I've never seen such a bad job of pretending to sing in a movie musical. But no one could show off Cecil Beaton's outrageous fashion concoctions to better effect, especially the scene-stealing dress and towering hat Hepburn wears in the Ascot sequence.
There are actually many problems with the material itself. It's dramatically inert, for one. The plot is paper thin yet the movie continues on and on for three hours long past the point where the main conflict has been resolved. Everything feels padded; scenes seem longer than they need to be. The character of Eliza's father, which seems like a very important one on paper, could actually, when you think about it, be excised from the film entirely without in the least affecting the plot. And the musical numbers are lacking a certain vitality--the blocking consists of people just sort of walking around on sets singing or talking their way through songs, and one craves a rollicking production number here and there. George Cukor doesn't show much imagination in his directing; however, true to form, the Academy gave Cukor his sole Oscar for this, one of his most anonymous directorial efforts.
But despite all of these faults, I still very much like this movie. It's fun, it's mindless, it puts me in mind of spring. It appeals to the Anglophile in me. It's a never less than respectable adaptation of one of the greatest stage musicals of all time.
Grade: A-
For one, the Lerner and Loewe score is timeless, and it sounds great in the film. It's also nice that it's captured in its entirety---no songs from the stage version were dropped, not even superfluous numbers like Freddie's reprise of "On the Street Where You Live." The film also captures the performance of Rex Harrison in the role of Henry Higgins, a role he created on stage. Like Yul Brynner in "The King and I," Rex Harrison so perfectly embodied Higgins that any actor who's ever attempted to play him since has to pretty much impersonate Harrison or risk the disappointed wrath of audiences. And there are also some colorful character actors who do much with smaller roles, notably Wilfred Hyde-White as Col. Pickering, Stanley Holloway, who gets a couple of showstoppers as Alfred Dolittle, and Gladys Cooper, with maybe five minutes of screen time and no songs, but who nevertheless runs away with a couple of scenes of her own as Higgins' acerbic mother.
The weakest link in this cast, it pains me to say, is Audrey Hepburn. As much as I've liked her in other things, she simply isn't convincing as Eliza Dolittle. And her lip synching is atrocious--I've never seen such a bad job of pretending to sing in a movie musical. But no one could show off Cecil Beaton's outrageous fashion concoctions to better effect, especially the scene-stealing dress and towering hat Hepburn wears in the Ascot sequence.
There are actually many problems with the material itself. It's dramatically inert, for one. The plot is paper thin yet the movie continues on and on for three hours long past the point where the main conflict has been resolved. Everything feels padded; scenes seem longer than they need to be. The character of Eliza's father, which seems like a very important one on paper, could actually, when you think about it, be excised from the film entirely without in the least affecting the plot. And the musical numbers are lacking a certain vitality--the blocking consists of people just sort of walking around on sets singing or talking their way through songs, and one craves a rollicking production number here and there. George Cukor doesn't show much imagination in his directing; however, true to form, the Academy gave Cukor his sole Oscar for this, one of his most anonymous directorial efforts.
But despite all of these faults, I still very much like this movie. It's fun, it's mindless, it puts me in mind of spring. It appeals to the Anglophile in me. It's a never less than respectable adaptation of one of the greatest stage musicals of all time.
Grade: A-