My Fair Lady (1964)

Subject: My Fair Lady (1964) Wed Jul 02, 2008 4:56 pm

This movie, a musical, tells the story of a low class woman who makes a career selling flowers on the streets who is discovered by a wealthy professor who vows to change her speech and manner so that she appears to be an upper-class citizen. The plot is nothing terrific, but it isn't bad either. It's a little slow at times, but consistently paced. There's a few moments that are somewhat comical which aids in the watchability of the three hour musical.

The film stars Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn. They both act rather well. Harrison won Best Actor while Hepburn was nominated for no Academy Award. I was especially impressed with her accent which changes throughout the film At first she's dressed and speaks in a manner such that I couldn't even recognize her as Hepburn. She ends the film with an entirely different accent that sounds nothing like what I'm accustomed to for her.

While the acting was pretty good, the singing and dancing was less than stellar. The movie didn't have much in the way of dancing at all which seems a little odd for a musical. While I don't particularly care for the singing and dancing aspect of musicals, this one didn't seem to do this particularly well. Singin' in the Rain had lots of singing and dancing which I didn't care for either, but it seemed like it was much more well-done in this film. The major problem with this film is Audrey Hepburn's singing, or lack thereof. Her singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon which was very distracting as Nixon's voice sounds nothing like Hepburn's - it's way too high and Hepburn's character sings so much it is quite annoying. Hepburn did a little bit of singing in previous films I've seen and famously sung "Moon River" in Breakfast at Tiffany's (which I have not seen) so I'm not sure the dubbing of her voice was necessary.

Overall, this was probably more enjoyable a film than Singin' in the Rain despite its shortcomings. With the very distracting dubbing of Hepburn's voice and lack of impressive musical numbers, this film probably ends up being just slightly worse than Singin' in the Rain. For a fan of musicals (which I am not) this is probably a great film. For everyone else, this is a good movie, but not great.

72/100
C-

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