Warner Bros. Pictures
Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfred Hyde-White, Gladys Cooper, Jeremy Brett, Theodore Bikel, Mona Washbourne, Isobel Elsom, John Holland, Alan Napier, Marni Nixon
Eliza Doolittle(Audrey Hepburn) is a flower girl who sells violets in the streets of London. On a bet, Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), famous linguistic expert takes her in an attempt to pass her off as a Lady at a ball with the top royalty of Europe in just 6 weeks by teaching her to speak properly. In the process Henry, a confirmed bachelor comes to depend on her, and she learns that after pretending to be royalty, going back to the streets is hard. This is the classic movie adaptation of the world famous Broadway play. Just remastered and restored, with brilliant colors and a fabulous soundtrack.
Everyone is probably familiar with the story of My Fair Lady, but it’s really nice to revisit it, as it’s got much of the great stuff that made the movie musicals of the 50’s and 60’s so absolutely amazing. Great story, decent music (not the strongest score, but not half bad) and excellent performances by all the characters. Watching the initial hatred between Eliza and Henry turn into much, much more, much to Henry’s disgust is a fine evening. It’s the full musical, so it’s almost 3 hours long and includes an intermission, just as the original film did, it takes time, but if you get a chance to watch this on todays home theater equipment with brilliant colors and fabulous sound, it’s well worth a revisit. Years of watching this on small TV’s with mono sound has made us forget how beautiful these musicals were.
In my opinion, it’s not quite as good as Sound of Music, Oliver, Camelot, and some of the later musicals, but this is still a very strong story with decent music and well worth revisiting 1964 for a few hours!
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
