Review: My Fair Lady (1964)

This was a first time viewing.

My Fair Lady (1964) [Musical Comedy]

It has taken me quite some time to actually sit down and watch My Fair Lady. I went into this movie dreading one thing: Its 170 minute running time [This trouble I have with running times has given me an idea for a blog, so I won't bore you to death with it now...]. Alas, after months of hesitation, and a week of the DVD just sitting there on my desk, I decided the time had come; I was going to watch it.

I had rather high hopes for the film. I usually rely an awful lot on the ratings on IMDB as to whether or not a movie is good, or, at the very least, decent. This movie has so far garnered a score of 7.9. After viewing, I believe this to be quite "fair".

I really liked My Fair Lady. It was a very witty, light-hearted movie.

Set in London in the early 1900s, My Fair Lady is the story of Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who's simply trying to make a living for herself. One Night, she stumbles across a man named Henry Higgins, a professor in phonetics. He comments that within six months he could teach even someone like her to talk proper English; to talk like a lady should talk. Intrigued by this, Eliza asks Dr Higgins to do just that. Together, with the added help of Colonel Hugh Pickering (A fellow phonetics expert), they go about turning the unclean, common Eliza into the beauiful, well spoken Ms Doolittle.

"She belongs to me, I paid five pounds for her!"

As previously stated, I enjoyed My Fair Lady. I didn't love it, but I enjoyed it. I thought that Audrey Hepburn was wonderful as Eliza, and that Wilfrid Hyde-White was very good as Colonel Hugh Pickering, but the best performance of the movie was by Rex Harrison, who played Henry Higgins. We was a delight on the screen. He brought every frame of the film to life. It's no wonder he won an oscar for his efforts (Best Actor in a Motion Picture, 1964).

"What's to become of me?"

I really liked some of the songs in the film, while others I could have done without. My favourites included "An Ordinary Man", "Get Me To The Church on Time", and, my favourite, "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?"

"Someone's 'ead restin' on my knee,
Warm an' tender as 'e can be. 'ho takes good care of me,
Aow, wouldn't it be loverly?"

Overall, it was quite an enjoyable experience. 7/10

Trivia: The original Broadway production of My Fair Lady starred Julie Andrews as Eliza. The studio producing the picture decided against casting Andrews for the lead in the film because she was unknown in the movie world. Instead, they opted to go with the very well known Audrey Hepburn. Hepburn tried her best at singing, but was eventually dubbed by Marni Nixon in the final print. Due to this, Hepburn was not even nominated for an Academy Award. That year, the Oscar was won by an actress making her film debut. The film was Mary Poppins, and the actress was none other than Julie Andrews.

- Vixtastr43