Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. My Fair Lady is the thirty-seventh film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. An acrobat flying, twirling, tumbling through the air can inspire great awe, but that sense of wonder can be flushed away if they are unable to stick the landing. A beloved television show can be ruined by a disappointing finale. So too can some of the very best stories and films be diminished by a finale that fails to hit the mark. Such is the case for George Cukor’s resplendent but ultimately flawed My Fair Lady.
Adapted from Alan Lerner’s play of the same name — itself adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion — My Fair Lady tells a biting tale of English classism. Cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle (a delightful Audrey Hepburn) toils away in a London slum. Her job is burdensome, her father is an absentee drunkard and life seems to be taking her nowhere. All she can do is dream of a warm fire, a stocked kitchen and a place to rest her head. Passing by one day is professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison reprising his role from the play) who makes a bet with his colleague Col. Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White) that he can teach Eliza to shed her harsh accent and pass for a noblewoman. Eliza sees her chance to escape the rugged streets of London and reluctantly agrees to play guinea pig for Higgins. One thing My Fair Lady absolutely nails is the music. Lerner and Frederick Lowe’s musical numbers are frequently catchy and especially well adapted to the screen by Cukor. It would have been nice to see Hepburn’s own renditions of the songs used, but she performs the choreography and lip sings with such alacrity. Even as Harrison chants more than he sings, the numbers are such delights that they stand out against other musicals of the era. The film is also a tremendous achievement in production. Sets are vibrant and lived in, each distinct and memorable. The London square where Eliza and Higgins first meet has a sort of grime coated charm to it, the people and place are rough but they’re also industrious and gregarious. In contrast to that are the uncannily pristine locales inhabited by the elite. The race grounds and embassy building are palaces of wealth towering over a gaggle of ostentatiously dressed people putting on airs. Those costumes too are marvels. Enormous elaborate hats, dresses, jewels and the like litter every scene. Cuckor smartly uses the dressings of high society to critique it throughout much of the film. Those gaudy costumes, like a peacock’s feathers, present an outward appearance these characters carefully curate. At the races they sing in a dull monotone about how thrilling it is to watch the horses run, never betraying as much as a smile in the process. Eliza, by striking contrast, is the only one seeming to have any fun in the process. Her outbursts of joy and excitement however are seen as something to snuff out and as she wades further into noble society she slowly loses the spark of life she had when she was a penniless flower girl. That transformation is a striking commentary on the performative elitism of the wealthy, it is also an unfortunate parallel to the fundamental flaws of the story. In the first half Eliza is such a firebrand of a character and with an enthralling deviousness by Hepburn. Her spats with Higgins and playful manner of singing are a tremendous delight to watch. When Hepburn has to retreat into a stuffier version of the character in the second half — which she also plays quite well — the film sputters like a fire running out of fuel. Of course, all of this leads into a baffling ending that undercuts so much of the sharp criticism present in the earlier parts of the film. In the final scene Eliza makes a choice — one that was specifically and intentionally not made in Shaw’s original Pygmalion — to give the story a “happier” ending. What it does in practice is hollow out the journey that Eliza goes through and validate the mistreatment she endures in direct opposition to the way that emotional abuse is portrayed earlier. In that way My Fair Lady is a wonderful film that cannot stick the landing. Worse yet, where it lands lessens the genuinely special perspective of scenes that came before it. There is still a great deal of pleasure and enjoyment to be had here but those diminishing returns leave a sour taste. 7/10
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