My Fair Lady (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Adaption of One of Broadway's Best
Review: One of the classics of the American musical theater, "My Fair Lady" is brought to us with amazing grace and sensitivity by legendary dirctor George Cukor. This musical has it all: a classic score by Lerner and Loewe (including "I Could have Danced All Night," "The Rain in Spain," and "Get me to the Church on Time"), an interesting story, and great characters. Rex Harrison proves to be nothing less then supurb as Henry Higgens, the speach teacher who vows to "never let a woman in my life," but finds himself falling for flower girl Eliza Dolittle. The supporting cast is in top form, with special mention going to the hysterical Stanley Halloway as Alfred P. Dolittle, the charming Wilfred Hyde-White as Pickering, and Jeremy Brett as Freddie. My on real complaint is Audrey Hepburn, who plays Eliza. While she is far from bad, Miss Hepburn has no voice, and I can't stand it when they use another actress to dub the voice of a star. Why can't they just hire a singer in the first place? The part should have gone to Julie Andrews (who originated it on Broadway). All in all, agreat film for the whole family. Check it out!

Rating:
Summary: ONE OF THE GREAT ENTERTAINMENTS
Review: This is a splendid example of a splendid movie. "My Fair Lady" gives richly to its audience through its gorgeous sets and costumes, vibrant and exhilirating music, crisp and memorable performances, and perfectly stylized direction. Stylized enough to win the picture a rare eight Academy Awards including 1964's Best Actor, Best Director, and the coveted Best Picture. George Cukor directs the prodution with a trademark flourish and wit that makes it an even greater pleasure to watch. Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison, in his Oscar-winning role) meets up with a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle (a perfectly endearing and charming Audrey Hepburn). Higgins makes a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White) that within six months he could pass the grubby Cockney off as a duchess at the Embassy Ball. Eliza cannot resist Higgins' offer, and he tutors her in the proper manner of society and speech. There are some genuinely great scenes with Hepburn and Harrison during several unorthodox speech exercises, which are very witty. The golden songs are spectacular and still popular today, such as "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" and "The Rain In Spain" and "I Could Have Danced All Night" among them. And the film is absolutely a motherlode of beautiful scenes: Hepburn and her Cockney friends dancing to "Loverly", Hepburn, Harrison, and Hyde-White's joyous rendition of "Rain in Spain", the Ascot scene featuring a perfectly delicious Hepburn, the Embassy Ball scene where Hepburn is believed to be a foreign princess, and the unbearably romantic final scene between Hepburn and Harrison are worth every cent. Every scene is beautifully painted in glorious Technicolor, adding only another splash to this elegant spectacle. "My Fair Lady" is a timeless entertainment, a film that should be seen at least once... and I guarantee you that if you do see it once, it won't be enough!

Rating:
Summary: A Marvelous Musical, but Needs an Audience to Really Live
Review: My Fair Lady is a musical that will live forever without a doubt and the movie version, despite the scandal that it caused in 1964 because Jack Warner cast Audrey Hepburn in the role of Eliza Doolittle instead of Julie Andrews, is still one of the finest musicals ever made. Hollywood was incredibly petty about that issue. Julie Andrews received Best Actress for her role in Mary Poppins that year, and Audrey Hepburn wasn't even mentioned, a nasty slap in the face when she was charming in the role. Today people watching the film would never believe such nonsense; the film is so enchanting nobody could believe such trash could have taken place. The musical took the best of Broadway, brought it to the screen with an amazing success -- shame on the people who tried to bring shame on such a great work!

The Lerner-Loewe score is classic and won the hearts of the world easily when the show premièred years ago. Even today, the music serenades listeners with the same charm. Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) meets with Colonel Pickering (Wilfred Hyde-White), by accident the same night he meets the very unkempt and raucous flower girl, Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn), whose coarse manner and poor English doom her to a life of poverty and gloom. When he boasts that he could teach her and pass her off as someone in a higher class, he never realizes that she might actually be listening to him, but listen she does, and to his astonishment, she shows up at his home, intending to pay "not more than a shilling, take it or leave it" to learn her own language. Pickering, hearing that someone has actually taken Higgings up on his dare, agrees to fund the lessons to watch and see if it will work or fail.

What follows could be considered a comedy of errors or disasters, depending on how you look at it. Eliza finds herself working a lot harder than she ever dreamed, and suddenly she has to do things she never did before, like take a bath every day in hot water. Before long, her father shows up (Stanley Holloway), and in comes the culture clash of the Cockneys and the middle class, a classic British study in social conflict. Higgins can't resist meddling and writes off to a philanthropist, telling of "an original moralist, one Alfred P. Doolittle," and thus lights the fuse to a time bomb. Of course, Alfred Doolittle is all too ready to part with his daughter, provided he gets some money for drinking as part of the deal -- so much for his "original morals"!

Then one evening, it happens. Eliza has her breakthrough. She actually makes it. Her English is intact. Everyone celebrates in the paean to "The Rain in Spain." Delirious with joy, they plan an event at Ascot to try out her wings. The only problem is that while she speaks like a lady, she has not yet mastered BEING a lady yet, not to the extent that is required at Ascot. However, with more work, more effort, and more polish, ultimately she does make it at a ball at which she convinces everyone that she is a princess.

The success is complete -- but what now? Eliza has convinced everyone that she is royalty, but where does she go? What does she do? Higgins has won his bet. Everyone is busy congratulating him. Meanwhile, she cannot go back to the life she had. She cannot be what she once was. She is lost, and now she is angry that she has been made into nothing. She decides to leave and goes to the home of Higgins' mother (Gladys Cooper) to seek asylum. It is there that she finally declares her independence in the song "Without You." It is only then that Henry Higgins realizes that Eliza has come to mean more to him than just a student, that she has somehow become someone dear in his life, as he expresses in the song "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face."

The musical, unlike the original play upon it was based, actually becomes a strange sort of love story in which both Higgins and Eliza do admit a bond between themselves and remain together. Something about the lyric quality of the musical has made it a timeless classic. Now that it has been preserved on DVD, there is no doubt in my mind that it will remain so.

So why do I give it four stars and not five? Because as you will notice when viewing it, there are many parts of the musical that need an audience's reaction to be complete. A perfect example is the scene at the race at Ascot. When Eliza shouts at the race, without the entire audience's reaction, the scene comes across as tepid compared to when there is a full audience; the audience's laughter is almost part of the script. Another such place is when Alfred P. Doolittle enters and laughs; the look on Henry Higgins face when he smells the alcohol on his breath always generates a guffaw from a large audience, but when a person watches it alone, such a moment can slip by almost unnoticed. So much of the script seems to include audience reaction that My Fair Lady seems to be best viewed with a large group of people admiring it together. The greatness of the musical cannot be diminished, no matter what, but when you view these scenes, you'll have to admit that it would be different with a large audience laughing.

When the film was originally made, Audrey Hepburn fully expected to sing the entire part herself, but later most of her role was dubbed by Marni Nixon. This decision came as a surprise to her, and not entirely a pleasant one. In the song "Just You Wait," she does sing the opening of the song herself, but the middle part where the more lyrical strain is heard, the dubbing is very obvious. An astute listener can tell when she is singing and when Marni Nixon is singing; she does take credit for at least part of the singing role in the film.

Rating:
Summary: Not major complaints, by any means, but...
Review: I have to wonder what happened to the longer Academy Awards show footage that was on the Special Edition laser disc.

(This excellent, new, two-disc DVD edition of MY FAIR LADY is, essentially, a reproduction of a big, expensive laser disc box set that came out in 1994.)

That set featured several minutes of extra footage from the Oscar show (Joan Crawford presenting George Cukor the Best Director Award, and Cukor's acceptance speech; Audrey Hepburn giving the Best Actor Award to Rex Harrison, and Harrison's gracious acceptance; Gregory Peck giving out the Best Picture Oscar to Jack L. Warner). All that shows up on this new Special Edition DVD is Warner's brief words of thanks upon receiving his award.

Also, three sequences on the Special Features disc (the Hollywood premiere footage, and the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Martin Scorsese bonus interviews) include a rather distracting time counter in the upper left hand corner of the screen, that runs through out the sequences (at least on my copy). The very same footage on the laser disc was (mercifully) free of this annoyance.

Rating:
Summary: I had such a fun time with this! Make some more!
Review: What ever happen to the days when high quality movies were also really fun (Singing in the Rain, Some Like it Hot, The West Side Story)? Please, Hollywood, make more movies like this! This is my second favorite musical (after West Side Story).This movie had top production, great songs, and great acting (especially Rex Harrison). Recently movies like Moulin Rouge! And Chicago has given musicals an awakening. However, we need more! Directors can turn to movies like this and the ones I mentioned above for inspiration, because these movies were created to give the best entertainment for a short period (while doing it with a lot of style). Moreover, they are still cherished today, so there is an audience out there for these types of films. Watch "My Fair Lady" for the intelligence and style that was put into movies a while ago. I really recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Nico Crettex
Review: I have always liked musicals, and I especially liked this one. Even though I liked the book better, the musical has many acting scenes in which many characters sing. The singing part of the musical is a key factor that contributes and complements many parts of the play written by Shaw. Even though the reader has more space to imagine each character and situation in the play, the musical exposes the settings and the actors just as a similar as Shaw would have wanted. Despite this, it is necessary to state that Shaw's criticism is most likely to impact the reader more profoundly than what the musical would. I say so because the music involves singing well and having a nice voice, which might have put into second plan the true intentions of Pygmalion. In addition, I believe that the director of My Fair Lady made his own interpretation, which could have emphasized certain aspects that Shaw did not take seriously into account when writing his master piece. An example of this is the character Freddy. In the play, Freddy is portrayed a low class "gentleman" who has no talents at all; However, in the musical Freddy is shown as a high class person which is very concerned about him and his surroundings. Considering that the musical had slight modifications to the play, which is totally untreatable, I have to agree that having read the book and watched the movie, helped me to appreciate Pygmalion and all the critics found in it. Because the movie portrays a specific perspective of the play, and the Pygmalion another one, I obtained more knowledge about Shaw's point of view and about his complex personality.


Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I think that the movie, My fair Lady was a really boring movie specially because I don't like musicals and in this movie even though we didn't see some of the parts where they sing still the movie was not interesting and I wouldn't watch it again.
Now compared to book I think that the book is better because it has more to it. It is how Shaw wanted it and in the movie some changes have been applied like the horse race and also the way Eliza is. I think that Eliza has not been interpreted well in the movie because in the book we can picture her really poor girl that doesn't know how to speak well and in the movie she is not portrait like that. I'm not saying that she speaks really well in the movie but she speaks a bit better than how she really is in the book.
I think that the movie was really boring and `like all the movies that come from books it followed the same routine of the book being better than the movie.
I think that Shaw's satire is not well adapted although there is some satire with the relationship of Mr. Higgins and Eliza; the movie has not enough satire to at least look like the book.

Rating:
Summary: my fair lady movie vs book
Review: The movie My Fair Lady was based on the book by G.B. Shaw, Pygmalion. It tries to show the feelings and the personality of the characters in the book but I don't think this is done too well. The book and movie vary in certain aspects, like the fact that the movie is a musical and also some of the words are changed, added, and sometimes even left out. I think that many of Shaw's satirical ideas and messages are misinterpreted in the movie or not shown well enough.

Some of the characters do not have the same personality as the book. For example, Higgins, in the book, has a very strong and controlling personality, as well as Eliza. In the movie, though, Eliza's part of this personality was not portrayed as well. It seemed as though she was more of a gentle women just trying to survive. Some of these things were changed to make it a more interesting movie and to capture its audience, but I think Shaw would have been disappointed by it. In the movie they exaggerate the upper class and its elegance, like in the party where everyone is dressed in black and white and everything was done with extreme care and elegance. Also, the part where Higgins puts the teacup on his head was funny but not what Shaw would have done.

I think that although the movie was good and entertaining, it cannot really compete with the book since it does not express Shaw's original ideas. The movie changed some ideas around and added new things to the setting and characters to make it a more interesting movie but I think that Shaw would have definitely made the move differently.


Rating:
Summary: Who said a fair movie?
Review: Someone once said that with great power comes great responsibility but I suppose George Cukor never got the sense of the famous quote. The movie, an adaptation of the book My Fair Lady by the author George Bernar's Shaw, fails to portray the novelists view on society as it twists the content of the book, formatting it into a very hollywoodesque borderline furthermore, a joyful musical with now lesson whatsoever. On a first basis the characters are a simplistic retake on the ones from the book. Eliza played by the astonishing Audrey Hepburn deviates the original character creating a shallowest one. The character does not reflect middle class morality as it falls short in demonstrating the real suffering of the deserving/undeserving poor. Her perfect pronunciation when singing (Marni Nixon) confuses the audience, and discounts the whole concept of her having an awful accent, not helping at all to pass on the notion. Further on, Mr. Higgins played by Rex Harrison enlarges the concept of charm in the character that initially had no charm at all. On the other hand it enhances decently the concept of the manly prototype but at the same type it goes way over board creating an overacted personage and at the same type failing to reflect the division of classes. As a whole the characters fail to demonstrate the main concept: social prestige presenting a Hollywood classic but not a movie based on a classic novel of the English language. Further on the classic ending of the play is cruelly twisted into the one needed to make of this movie a chick flick with out content. The ending is nothing more than a cruel made up scene that fitted correctly into the poor version by Cukor.
On the other hand the movie as a production remains a complete success. The set designed to represent the typical grey London at the beginning of the century, fully addresses Shaw's desired scenery. Furthermore the dialogues are extracted in their majority from the book, helping at least in that section to remain faith to the play.
To sum up, the movie is nothing more than cliché version meant to be a Hollywood classic. This movie results unattractive if looked at with an English student's eye. Poor Bernard Shaw must be rolling in his grave.

Rating:
Summary: Juan Ernesto's reviem of my fair lady's adaptation
Review: "My fair lady", an adaptation of George Bernerd Shaw's play "Pygmalion".
From my point of view the movie, My Fair Lady is a fairly good adaptation of Shaws play'. It is true that some of Shaw's original ideas are missing or are misinterpreted. From the point of view of producers and directors, it is understandable that they had to change the play in its movie adaptation in order to make it interesting to the viewers and maintain profits. For example the people at the horse races dressed in black and white was a funny scene, but it wasn't anything like that in Shaw's play.

Overall the movie for me as a 16 year old who is more interested in action movies from this century was not one of the most exiting I have seen. I must confess I fell sleep watching it, but in the the time the movie came out it was a huge succes.

Earlier I was talking about the diferences between the movie and the play but there are many aspects of the film that were very succesfully passed from paper to film. For example the character of Henry Higgins maintained the feeling it gave us when we read the play. Rex Harrison's performance as Mr Higgins was indead one of the best Ive seen. He really kept the satire in his character. When Eliza embarassed him at the tea party and he put the tea cup over his head and turnd away, it was a funny bit of satire

Audrey Hepburn also had an outstanding performance. We could see the changes in Eliza very clearly as she became more educated and changed from a flower girl to a lady.
We could see how Eliza started to talk differently and act differently. She becomes a lady at the end of the movie and we can see that she cant return to the streets.

In this way the movie and the play were the same.