My Fair Lady (1964)
Genre: Comedy / Music
Duration: 170 minuten
Country:
United States
Directed by: George Cukor
Stars: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway
IMDb score:
7,7 (108.912)
Releasedate: 21 October 1964
My Fair Lady plot
"The loverliest motion picture of them all!"
Eliza Doolittle is a girl of the street. She earns her living by selling flowers on the street, she walks in rags and talks terribly flat. One rainy evening, while selling flowers for the theater, she discovers that someone is watching her and taking notes. It is the insufferable Professor Higgins, who has made a study of all kinds of dialects and language. The next day Eliza Doolittle puts on her nicest clothes and goes to Professor Higgins, she wants speech lessons from him so she can work in a flower shop, Higgins laughs in her face and claims it is an impossible task, but his friend, Colonel Pickering, make a bet with him. Eliza will go to the Embassy Ball accompanied by Pickering and Higgins and if the Queen does not notice that Eliza is a street girl, the bet is won.
Actors and actresses
Eliza Doolittle
Professor Henry Higgins
Alfred P. Doolittle
Colonel Hugh Pickering
Mrs. Higgins
Freddy Eynsford-Hill
Zoltan Karpathy
Mrs. Pearce
Mrs. Eynsford-Hill
Butler
Reviews & comments
IH88
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- 9903 messages
- 3205 votes
“There can't be any feeling between the likes of me and the likes of you.”
In My Fair Lady, Audrey Hepburn once again shows what an icon she is. Charismatic, beautiful, stylish, funny and engaging, but also sarcastic and villainous when necessary. Hepburn can let off steam in My Fair Lady.
The film is three hours long, but I didn't really feel that at any point. Time flies by, and that is also due to the momentum that director George Cukor keeps. No scene feels superfluous, and the details are just right. The music, the production design, the costumes, the sometimes razor-sharp dialogues, the role of Rex Harrison, etc. Everything is right. I had chosen a different ending myself, and especially the reprehensible behavior of Professor Higgins during the film could have had more consequences. But it doesn't really disturb.
Translated from Dutch · View original
rep_robert
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- 27572 messages
- 4187 votes
I am currently reading an autobiography of Hepburn and of course this also goes hand in hand with watching films in which half the Dutch shine. I have a number of Hepburn films on my shelf and hadn't seen this one yet. Once pressed in, I was a bit shocked by the playing time, because that is quite something for a film like this.
That said, the film does indeed suffer from the long running time. It gets repetitive at times and the songs often make it all fest a bit too long. After 5 minutes of singing about how they let Hepburn fool everyone you know it, and then it goes on for even longer. These kinds of songs in which Harrison doesn't really sing, but poops out lyrics to the beat is fun in the beginning, but later they take the tempo out of the movie. All in all, they shouldn't have let the film last more than 2 hours.
In addition, the entire movie feels a bit like a stage play, something that more older movies have. It's not annoying to watch, but the sets do look like one big play and the dialogues are just a bit too artificial. Nowadays they know how to make films more intensive and more personal.
Fortunately, the dialogues are very smooth and I can enjoy the exaggerated character that Hepburn puts down. Because the plot is fairly over the top, the film remains very smooth and light to watch. It would have been a problem if the film took itself too seriously.
It's all a bit dated and quite long-winded, but the light-hearted character, the sometimes very nice sweethearts (a Little bit of Luck) and the always enchanting Hepburn make the almost 3 hours more than bearable!
3.0*
Translated from Dutch · View original
starbright boy (moderator films)
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- 22749 messages
- 5356 votes
In 1964 the studio system was collapsing, but this movie pretends nothing is wrong. My Fair Lady has ancient roots. In 1913 George Bernard Shaw wrote the play Pygmalion. A silent Pygmalion obviously doesn't work, but Pygmalion has been filmed almost ever since movies started talking. In 1937 in the Netherlands (it was the first pre-war Dutch film I even saw) and a year later in the United Kingdom. In 1956 it was adapted into the musical My Fair Lady and this is a film adaptation. It is more classic Hollywood than the year suggests. So a studio production with detailed sets (for a while it was even the most expensive film shot in the US). A leading role that attracted audiences at the time (Hepburn, moreover, often played roles where she goes up and down between social classes). A director with a lot of experience who can make it. (Cukor had more than three decades of experience) A classic setup and the length that came with ambition at the time. Complete with intermission. It was another hit too. Best Picture Oscar (the reason I was watching this now). Eight Oscars in total. And the second biggest hit of that year. Hepburn didn't sing well enough to sing himself in this smoothed-out production.
The film is especially long and stretches the story enormously. The nicest thing is actually Harrisson who doesn't immediately draw the audience to the theaters, but is very suitable but does use the nicest quotable language. Certainly his mysogeny with a big wink at the end. But it was a bit of an end of an era. 5 years later, that year's classic musical was a flop (Hello Dolly!) and Midnight Cowboy won best picture. Other times.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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