Fairly speaking, vintage Hollywood musicals don't age well thanks to their tie-ins with ingrown fluffy affectation and sound-stage-bound artificiality, which doesn't see eye to eye with the surge of an ever-finicky/skeptical modern audience. But mercifully, MY FAIR LADY, George Cukor's Oscar BEST PICTURE title-holder, still can hold court and rivet viewers through its lilting numbers, tableaux vivants par excellence, and a barnstorming cast headlined by Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison. Cashing in on the popularity of George Bernard Shaw's stage play PYGMALION and its subsequent musical iteration from Lerner and Loewe, this film adaptation is first and foremost, a well- intention-ed crowd-pleas-er and takes no prisoners in flagging up its swagger and grandeur, both interior and exterior, the story-line pits a cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle (Hepburn) against Prof. Henry Higgins (Harrison), a misogynistic scholar of phonetics, who boasts that under his tutelage, within a six-month stint, he can transmogrify Eliza into a bona-fide duchess, to be presented in an embassy ball. Making allowance for Henry's make-up, he is way too snobbish to rope "that filthy, silly girl" into the deal, so it must be Eliza, who takes up the gauntlet of her own accord, with an impetus of bettering herself which attunes with the Edwardian time, when suffragettes are spotted parading on the streets of London. Abetted by Colonel Hugh Pickering (Hyde-White), Henry's new acquaintance and a kindred spirit in phonetics (who also implausibly and conveniently, co-habits with the pair in Henry's abode, indeed, their male bonding will grow chummier as a cross-current of the central gender spar, and reach its apogee in A HYMN TO HIM, WHY CAN'T A WOMAN BE MORE LIKE A MAN), a bet is struck and this folie-à-trois segues comically and tunefully through many mishaps and frustrations until Eliza magically expunges her cockney accent in THE RAIN IN SPAIN, under the spell of a patriotic rhetoric from Henry, and then is thrown into elation through Eliza's I COULD HAVE DANCED ALL NIGHT, alas! The biggest hindrance has been officially conquered!(suspended disbelief is critical to countenance this deus ex ma-china, subtlety and logic is given a wide berth here.) A leitmotif is the paralleled contrast between the transformation of Eliza, her appearance/utterance along with her inner state elevated by it and the intransigence of Henry, who habitually treats Eliza as a guinea pig, and takes her efforts for granted, the climax comes not in the palatial ball, but after, when a simmering Eliza lets rip to a bemusing Henry, who still has no clue why she suddenly blows a fuse on their (him and Pickering's) triumphant night, what an exasperating pedantic and egoist bore! Serendipitously, what trenchantly tones down Henry's defective persona is Mr. Harrison's invigorating elocution and a left-field approach of doing his numbers by speaking his lines in a singsong tone, pertinently deadens the schmaltzy impact of the material (I'M AN ORDINARY MAN) and leavens the hoary template, in the end of the day, Henry is the one who has learned a lesson, however unmerited he is, it is a cracking exemplar of a none-too-pleasant character salvaged by a transcendent show-stopper. Needlessly to say, being dubbed in a musical by a splendid belt-er (in this case, the unsung star here is Marni Bixon) takes the shine off an otherwise wholesome and majestic performance from Ms. Hepburn (who replaced Julie Andrews from the original musical play, ironically the latter won an Oscar the same year for MARY POPPINS while the former was given a cold shoulder early in the nomination stage, albeit the movie was being doled out a magnanimous twelve nominations including that vexatious coattail one for the venerable Ms. Gladys Cooper, who is barely present and given nothing remotely concrete to act), not in her prime though (she was 35-year-young to play a 21-year-old damsel), her portrayal of a girl's metamorphosis through her manner, accent and inward orbit is magnificent and isn't being eclipsed by her gorgeous wardrobe and millinery accouterments, her Eliza is a full-bodied character rising above her rite of passage as a winner refusing to take the short end of the stick (although the ending predictably but gingerly winks at a compromised happy-ending). Stanley Holloway steals the limelight with his own voice in two merry pieces (WITH A LITTLE BIT OF LUCK and GET ME To THE CHURCH ON TIME) as Eliza's bullheaded father Alfred, and is granted with a hard-earned Oscar nomination (au contraire of Ms. Cooper); a young, handsome and debonair Jeremy Brett (also dubbed in his singing by Bill Shirley) is a commensurate match for Ms. Hepburn, and a genteel Wilfrid Hyde-White drolly slums it in the singing-and-dancing sequences but captures an air of lassez-faire pulsating mostly on the sideline of this humdinger emblazoned with sparkling gender politics and chipper euphony.

On paper, I consider My Fair Lady to be almost without flaw. I've read the play it's based on, and I like this version better. (It's really fanficcy when you think about it. Aren't half of all fanfics meant to pair up characters that didn't end up together in the source material?) I can say with confidence that this is the best adaptation of a musical I've ever seen. Hepburn utterly convinced me she was Eliza. I have no complaints regarding her. Despite the film's length of almost three hours, I find it admirable that they cut nothing from the original libretto. Unfortunately, it is not without flaws. Allow me to list them:-Numerous lip-sync failures. -Obvious sound stages in supposed outdoor locations. -The added scene where the maids forcibly strip and bathe Eliza is highly disturbing.-In Eliza's big telling-Higgins-off song, she. . . waters plants???-Ironically, the actors often talk so quickly it's hard for me to understand them. Especially for the part where Higgins pep-talks Eliza by calling her attractive, the guy playing him should be slow and deliberate so that the scene carries overtones that he is uncomfortable about feeling attraction towards her. Furthermore, in the final scene, Rex Harrison isn't sad enough. All of these are conspicuous problems, but I'd sooner re-watch this than any other movie musical. The story is deeply touching, and the character arcs of the protagonists remind me so much of great writers like Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë. If you're uneasy about possible misogynistic subtext, let me say that Higgins reminds me of multiple romantic leads created by both those women. More to the point, the more imperious he is, the more heartwarming it is when he realizes the error of his ways. That is what makes My Fair Lady so satisfying where Pygmalion wasn't. Still, I'd be open to a remake if only to have a version where no one has 60s hair.

I bought this at a yard sale in 2013, kept putting it off thinking, "Aacck! Look how long it is! Singing and wacky accents! I should call the dentist and see if he can bump up that root canal!" I finally slapped it on...and I loved it! Rex Harrison's way of sing/talking, perfect! My favorite character: Colonel Pickering. Wilfred Hyde-White, that guy was great, a real scene stealer.Never before understood the allure of Audrey Hepburn...until now! Yeah, I'd seen Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Wait Until Dark, all many years ago. Maybe too many years ago, now I have a greater appreciation of classic movies. She's absolutely adorable in this movie, and that one scene when she walks out dressed for the ball...jaw, meet floor! Surprised I knew half the songs already. But it has been around awhile, plenty of time to become an iconic musical. It was great, check it out if you can.

Henry hates women. He is a mama's boy.This show is about a woman, but Henry wants to snag all the applause. He is snotty to women of what he thinks is the lower class.Henry is old, but unmarried and childless. Who could live with him, anyway? Mama tries to set him straight, but he is too stubborn.Henry is an obnoxious, selfish misogynist. His life revolves around his bratty self. Pygmalion, indeed. Pulling the strings, eh? End of my rant about stupid Henry Higgins.Now on to my observations about lovely Audrey Hepburn. Her pink outfit and matching hat are just divine. Freddy is a really cute number. Eliza jumps all over the vegetable cart with such divine movement and timing. She is joyously happy to be alive.Eliza's white ball costume is just divine. Her hair updo is just scrumptious. She even convinces the Theodore Bikel character that she is real royalty (???). I think Eliza surprised Henry and Colonel Pickering more than they thought that she would. Their creation became super popular. Henry and Pickering who? Pickering was an actual gentleman, opposed to Henry who was a childish, spoiled brat.Final scene: Henry ordering Eliza around, to pick up his slippers. What a moron. Get them yourself, you stupid idiot. Whatsa matter? Mama not around to pick up after you? Get a life. Who would want to marry you, anyway? I still liked this movie. It is a family favorite, for eons. The flower girl did succeed in shoveling it to old Henry. She was capable of being out on her own now.From clothing, I would guess the time period would be around 1910-1912. World War One was just around the corner. Henry would have still been studying obscure dialects, lost in his goofy nitwit cloud of oblivious nonchalance.The singing and dancing: you know that they are my favorites. So what if some singing is dubbed. It is still a wonderful show. Some characters even talked-sang.Still a 10/10.