Friday, January 20, 2017

My Fair Lady

On his way home from the opera, pompous linguistics professor Henry Henry (Rex Harrison) happens upon uncultivated, cockneyed, and uncouth flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) and wages his assistant that he can transform her into a passable member of the upper class. From George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, which drew on the Greek myth, George Cukor's My Fair Lady is an entertaining, insightful take on the battle of the sexes/classes with sleek production values, memorable and sophisticated Lerner and Loewe songs, and only a few lulls. Harrison is brilliant in an Oscar winning role and Hepburn is absolutely lovely (or loverly as you would have it) and makes her transformation almost believable.
*** 1/2 out of ****