My Fair Lady: Beloved Misfire

            One of the greatest fundamental stories in literature is that of Pygmalion and Galatea. The story originates in ancient Rome from the writer Ovid; it chronicles the story of a sculptor named Pygmalion who makes a model of his perfect woman using stone. He names the statue Galatea and falls in love with its beauty. He prays to the gods that Galatea comes to life, as no real woman matches her in beauty. In the end this wish is granted and they live happily ever after. According to one interpretation, this story is about relationships with friends and potential lovers. The main theme is that the image of a person or expectations for hypothetical person are too perfect when compared to reality. People should accept others as they are and comprehend flaws. George Bernard Shaw retold this in 1912 and had Pygmalion sculpt Galatea into a high society woman not from stone, but from a lower class girl.

            Pygmalion's name is now Henry Higgins, Galatea is Eliza Doolittle and the hammer and chisel are replaced with the English language and dresses. Also named Pygmalion, this story set in 1910s London was a successful play and contributed to Shaw winning a Nobel Prize in 1925. It tells of Higgins, a phonetics professor, in his attempts to pass lowly flower girl Eliza Doolittle off as a duchess in high society London. The ultimate test is a grand ball, where she is to be accepted by attendees as an equal without incident. Getting there is done through Higgins teaching Eliza phonetics, elocution and etiquette. The fact that a person's public image and treatment can be improved by better grammar and clothes shows how all people deserve respect. To paraphrase Shaw, the difference between a duchess and a flower girl is how they are treated. A very beloved remake of Shaw's take in the 1964 film My Fair Lady. A direct remake of the Broadway play of the same name released a decade earlier, this film tells the story of Higgins and Doolittle with music. While many enjoy My Fair Lady and it won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1964, there are issues to be had with it.

            Upon first glance, the audience sees a majestic assortment of extras wearing elegant clothing leaving a theater performance. This is a lovely sight and captivates the viewers into being invested in the story. However, once the physical backdrop is established the spark is extinguished. What should be the exterior of a theater appears to be a set, hastily made and obviously indoors. The rain and street are both inauthentic, something that sets the tone for the rest of the film and the acting.

            We are then introduced to Henry Higgins, played in an over the top manner by Rex Harrison. Harrison played Higgins on Broadway, but he feels like a novice alternating between extreme emotion and dull recitation of the script. His singing is not actually singing, but rather talking to the music that plays off screen. This was how the songs were meant to be performed but it comes across as weak. Higgins outside of the songs is meant to be a complex and troubled person; what is witnessed is a bipolar person who relies on quips to be appealing. This weak performance also translates to Audrey Hepburn portraying Eliza. Her performance is dreadful, feeling like she read the script in a terrible accent in as few takes a possible. The singing for Eliza was not done by Hepburn, except for one song that is obviously worse than the rest. If the audience is to gain sympathy for Eliza, feeling she was a duchess all along, it would help if she is portrayed as a human being. Showing emotion and being authentic are very important to get audiences to care. What is found in My Fair Lady is a dull man hammering phonetics and elocution into a uninteresting character.

            As mentioned previously, the physical design of My Fair Lady is a mixture of great costumes and terrible sets. Both were overseen by Cecil Beaton, a photographer and costume designer with a distinguished career. This would explain how every extra in the theater and ballroom scenes look amazing. The attire worn by the two protagonists are also breathtaking and help to establish the class difference between Eliza and Higgins. My Fair Lady excels grandly as far as costumes are concerned, but this is a feature length film and not a fashion show. That brings up the topic of sets, which were lacking in originality. The film is set in London, like the play, but was shot in California. This would not be a problem if there were exterior scenes shot outside with a realistic sky in the background and vegetation, but this did not happen. From the start of the film, nothing feels real about the story. If the sky is painted monochromatically grey outside the theater and is unnaturally blue above Higgins' house, an audience cannot be invested the plot. The story is amazing, but the artificial environment distracts from that and destroy the experience. Interior shots feel the most real, but are an bland monotone of either brown or white. This may have been done to help the audience pay attention to characters but does nothing else terrific.

            The largest saving grace of the film is the songs. These will not be discussed with as much depth as the acting and design, as bringing the story to life outweighs peripheral features like songs. It should be stated that a musical needs to be great even without music. While Harrison's songs are essentially monologues with music in the background, they are quite catchy. As distracting as the lack of synchronization is between Hepburn's lips and her songs, they are some of the best songs in musical history. Wouldn't It Be Loverly? provides more character exposition for Eliza than the acting performance. I Could Have Danced All Night shows the passion Eliza has for her linguistic accomplishment and is the highlight of the film. The story itself is astonishing, but has been told several times before and since My Fair Lady. It is a humorous take on expectations for people and societies attitudes towards each other, but the execution is subpar in this example. I would recommend the far superior 1938 non-musical Pygmalion over this picture for those who want to see the story of Henry Higgins creating his perfect woman. My Fair Lady is only slightly recommended for general audiences due to historic significance and is highly recommended lovers of musicals solely for the music.