Plot Intro
Impoverished, working class Patsy-Palmer-impersonator Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) just wants a room somewhere far away from the cold night air. In steps Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), an expert in phonetics who establishes a bet with his friend that he can transform Eliza into a dignified, regal, well-spoken lady worthy of meeting European royalty at an Embassy Ball in six months. Unfortunately, Eliza proves difficult to teach…
Based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion, My Fair Lady has proven to be one of the most popular and successful musicals ever produced, debuting in 1956 on Broadway with Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews playing the leads. Now here’s where the Oscar-controversy comes in. While Harrison transferred his iconic role from stage to screen, Jack L. Warner wanted the more well-known Audrey Hepburn in the lead role instead of poor Andrews. This proved to be an unpopular decision, partly because Hepburn’s singing voice needed to be dubbed, and also because Andrews ended up making her big screen debut that year in Disney’s biggest money-maker, Mary Poppins. Consequently, while My Fair Lady got the Best Picture accolade, Andrews walked away with Best Actress (Hepburn wasn’t even nominated) and then went on to star in an even bigger hit musical the following year, which we’ll be reviewing next week.
Despite this, My Fair Lady is a film that has endured the decades, and songs such as “Wouldn’t It be Loverly?” and the “The Rain in Spain” have entered the movie musical Hall of Fame. Nonetheless, if someone were to ask me if I liked it, I’d probably give an apathetic shrug and say “Eh, it’s alright.”
Having been raised on lively, vibrant musicals such as The King and I, The Sound of Music, Oliver!, and pretty much anything written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, My Fair Lady comes across to me as static, slow-moving, and abominably heavy on dialogue. A vast majority of it takes place in Higgins’ living room, and some of the songs ground the entire plot to a halt. Examples are Alfred Doolittle’s “With a Little Bit of Luck” which tells us that he is a puckish, free-spirited scoundrel even though this has already been established, and “On the Street Where You Live” which is a lovely song but delivered by one of the most superfluous characters just standing in the street. Director George Cukor has a wealth of lively music-hall-style songs but very few of them lift off the ground because they’re usually delivered in one, pedestrian camera shot. I was begging for West Side Story’s ballet-dancing gangs to come prancing into Edwardian London.
Also, I’m never really convinced by or involved in Eliza’s sudden transformation (Hepburn gets an A for effort but I think she’s a bit lost amidst her undulating accent), and especially by Higgins’ love or, at least, reliance on Eliza. Higgins is repeatedly shown to be an elitist, misogynist, and anti-working-classist, and pretty much treats Eliza like shit throughout the full 3 hours. Harrison gives the best performance in the film, but I’ve never felt a need to get behind his character.
There are some great moments - Higgins’ mother has some enjoyably catty lines, the Ascot scene is a hilarious attack on the behaviour of the bourgeoisie, and the Embassy Ball is the sort of tribute to unnecessary opulence that you can find on any wedding Pinterest board. I enjoyed the Ball in particular due to it being one of the most plot-heavy scenes, but it’s delivered mostly through music and movement, and very little dialogue (in contrast to most of the film).
So it’s not all bad, but I’m not a fan of My Fair Lady. Great musicals have soaring scores but also tackle tough themes in my opinion, and while the other musical winners in the 1960’s tackle gang warfare, Nazi invasion, and infant poverty, My Fair Lady stays conspicuously away from being a hard-hitting attack on England’s ridiculous class system.
Highlight
The Ascot song is a great bit of satire - the upper-classes sing about their excitement and anticipation, but show absolutely none of it in their blank faces and robotic movements. It’s a shame the rest of the film is not so savage.
Lowlight
Many songs could have either been cut from the final product, or given the music hall treatment they need to inject some life into them. “With a Little Bit of Luck” and “On the Street Where You Live” are prime examples.
Mark
4/10
I completely disagree with Paul.
The fact is that on previous viewings I was very much of the same opinion as him, finding it plot heavy and curiously staid. But watching today I noticed in fact how utterly cruel a story it is. Where Paul says he found it lacking in showing the class struggles, I felt the story - and the director George Cukor - actually brought this to the fore over and over again. At the very beginning of the film, we see the high society leaving Covent Garden opera house and being forced to shelter from the rain, alongside the ‘riff raff’ that Eliza hails from. When Eliza thinks she is about to be accused of some unknown crime by a detective (actually Higgins noting down her accent for his studies), she utterly breaks down, wailing in despair. It became clear to me that this moment when she wails - and in all the later moments when she does - it is her only outlet of the fear that being an extremely poverty-stricken human must have. It makes Higgins’ constant disregard and dismissal of her even more painful, his utter miscomprehension and refusal to see the world from her view constantly edges towards disgusting.
Alfred Doolittle, Eliza’s father, is another example of this, having turned his back on being an ‘honourable’ poor person and instead taking what he can get. The film refuses to paint him as a villain, but actually uses moments to reinforce why he has these opinions. Colonel Pickering (a wealthy and entitled gentleman) asks him horrifiedly if he has no morals. No, Alfred replies, he is too poor for them. It may have been intended as a joke, but the direction doesn’t suggest it, and certainly watching now, you see it as a sharp moment of reality, among the pleasant armchairs and library of Higgins’ sitting room.
But it’s not only there. The servants sing about ‘Poor Professor Higgins’ starving himself and staying up late, but the reality is that he’s eating large cream teas while Eliza looks on hungry, and forcing her to stay up until 3am working on her accent. And in what I feel to be the most painful scene of the film, after the success of the ball, all the characters ignore her - servants, Higgins and Pickering - and congratulate each other on the success of the wager. Eliza - still in her finery - stands alone in the corner of the room completely forgotten.
I feel sorry for Audrey Hepburn. She apparently worked incredibly hard on the role as she faced a lot of enmity from the cast and crew who all wanted Julie Andrews back. She attempted to sing the role herself but was then overruled by the producers. And she is now always known for this role as having a note attached: ‘Should’ve been Julie Andrews’. But watching it fresh for the first time in years, I think she turns in a phenomenal performance. You are aware at every moment what she thinks and feels, including incredibly complex emotions. As a young flower-seller, you see her pain and pride constantly battling, while the agony of her speech lessons seems even greater. It’s the nuances that impressed me - how she showed her mid-way development at the Ascot races, her voice almost there, but not quite - her mannerisms slightly too showy but along the right lines. (As a side note: this is how much of a dick Henry Higgins is - he teaches her to speak but doesn’t teach her anything about society rules so she starts talking about her aunt’s suspicious death at the races only for Higgins’ face to turn to thunder in the background).
Rex Harrison gives a great performance too as the chauvinistic Higgins while Stanley Holloway as Alfred Doolittle keeps up the energy for all his songs. Unlike Paul, I love all the songs. They’re not designed to push plots forwards, but they give character insights. 'A Little Bit of Luck' shows Alfred at his cheeriest but also fully reveals how anti-society he is. 'I Could Have Danced All Night' is wistful and cheerful, but also as emotional as 'Wouldn’t It Be Luvverly?' in showing Eliza’s naive optimism and want to be better. The film is fast paced, although the last twenty minutes does go on a bit. Maybe some quicker editing there would have helped…
The final cruelty of this film for me is in its ending. Eliza breaks down weeping after the ball, saying how she does not know where to go anymore. It’s a nasty moment as we see she can never go back to Covent Garden as she won’t be accepted there now, but also she isn’t actually high class and probably will never fit in. The film produces two solutions: one is that she marry the sappy Freddie who has met her once and now is fully in love with her, the other is that she stay with Higgins as a friend/lover/secretary. The film and Shaw’s original play Pygmalion chose different endings to each other, but neither satisfy me. What we want is to see her go out and start her own business, and make her own success. But the film ends in a place where we know Eliza will never be able to fulfil her true potential - she’s now better off than where she started, but she’s also lost between the classes. It’s a subtly savage ending to what is a dark take on 1900s English society.
Highlight
The scene where Higgins and Pickering congratulate each other on Eliza’s success is beautifully written, performed and directed. What is potentially an upbeat song becomes nasty as we see the unnoticed Eliza outside the circle. It’s a potent metaphor for the class system at work.
Lowlight
I wasn’t a fan of the ‘dream’ section during Just You Wait. We don’t need to see the King in Eliza’s daydream killing Higgins. It just didn’t fit.
Mark
8/10
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