The winner of eight Academy Awards including the coveted Best Picture, My Fair Lady is based on the
stage musical of the same name and tells the story of a young working class
flower seller called Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) who is taken in by an
arrogant phonetics Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) who bets that he can transform
the young woman’s gutter mouth and slovenly demeanour into that of a lady who
could pass for Aristocracy under close inspection in just six months. The film
can rightly be called a classic and contains some of the most recognisable
songs in all of musical cinema.
The film is lavishly designed and very well made, featuring
some incredible sets which have such a realistic look that I wasn’t totally
convinced they weren’t real, despite being more than familiar with some of the
locations. The entire film was shot in California
but creates a vision of London
as real as I’ve seen in any American film. And not a single shot of Big Ben or
a ‘London, England’ caption. Bliss. It is also
a very well acted film on the whole with just one exception. Rex Harrison won a
more than deserved Oscar for his performance and Stanley Holloway and Gladys
Cooper were also recognised with deserved nominations but the actor who lets
the film down is its lead, Audrey Hepburn.
