My Fair Lady

NR	Rottentomatoes.com Rating:94%	1964
(infrequent, mild language)	Picky Flicks Quote: "The best stage musical of all time and one of the most loved romances." -Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times	RUNTIME: 2 hrs. 55 mins.
Visit:www.screenit.com for complete details		Movie Mood:Lovely

If someone had told me just how enchanting a movie about a cockney girl who warbles things like, “Wouldn’t it be luverly,” could be, I’m not sure I would have believed him (or her, more likely). So, it’s probably a good thing that one of my longtime childhood friend’s mothers was an avid fan of musicals and plopped us down one day to watch My Fair Lady. At least, I think that’s something like how my first viewing must have transpired, though I have no specific recollection of it.

The point is that, despite a clichéd rags-to-riches premise, My Fair Lady manages to take the musical genre to new heights of dramatic fulfillment and character development. And on top of those lofty achievements, it turns the verbal slugfests between ‘Enry ‘Iggins and Eliza Doolittle into such masterpieces of cattiness and chemistry that it’s hard to tear your eyes away.

No, My Fair Lady is not your average musical (which, don’t get me wrong, is a genre I very much enjoy in its own right) but instead an above-average romance and genuinely affecting drama all rolled up in an unlikely Cinderellaesque storyline that has guttersnipe flower girls catching the eye of royalty. Oh, and did I mention that it’s funny? Because, improbably though its premise may be, it is funny. Very.

Of course, if most cockney flower girls had Audrey Hepburn’s bone structure to begin with, I suppose there might be a higher percentage of them floating around royal balls in amazing confections of ivory silk and diamonds. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The basic premise of My Fair Lady involves two principal characters: Eliza, a lowly, uneducated young laborer eking out a forgettable existence on the unforgiving streets of London, and Henry Higgins, a celebrated middle-aged linguist who wears natty suits and can place a man within a few miles of his birthplace just by hearing the first two sentences that come out of his mouth.

When Higgins, along with his friend, Colonel Pickering, encounter Eliza on the streets one day, Pickering manages to peak his intolerant, irascible friend’s interest with a joking suggestion that Eliza’s lot in life could be entirely changed were her speech that of a refined lady instead of a street urchin. Higgins, who is the consummate bachelor and ultimate control freak, loves a good challenge. He rallies at the thought of molding someone else’s life like so much clay in his hands using nothing but his favorite tool: language.

At first, Eliza balks, convinced that a gentleman who makes the kind of promises Higgins does must be no gentleman at all. But, later, intrigued by his mention of her possibly rising even so far as to the position of a sales assistant in a flower shop, she seeks him out to ask if his offer still stands.

Before you can say, “Bob’s your uncle,” (a legitimate cockney phrase, I believe), Eliza finds herself stripped of her filthy carpet bag and street clothes and doused in the first honest bubble bath she has ever been accosted by in her young life. The screeches and howls that emanate from the usually decorous Hepburn’s mouth are, indeed, glorious to witness.

Thus begins an “experiment,” which ultimately produces all and none of the results that Henry Higgins had predicted. He manages to tame Eliza’s wild ways and unruly vowels and takes great pains to transform her wardrobe and coiffure into that of a genteel young lady. In other words, he wins his bet with Colonel Pickering. But in the process, he loses his heart. Not that he would ever admit that.

And along the way, we are treated to such musical gems as, “Wouldn’t it Be Loverly?,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “Get Me to the Church,” and “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man,” among several others. The mix of drama and music, pathos and humor is so delicate, so sophisticated, that you hardly realize until it’s over just how easily it could have tilted too far in one direction or another and become yet another frothy songfest or a bore.

Thank goodness My Fair Lady is neither, as evidenced, at least in part, by its impressive twelve Academy Award nominations and eight wins (one of which was not—headscratchingly enough—best actress for Hepburn’s revelation of a performance as Eliza).

So, check it out if you haven’t already. Just don’t blame me if you find yourself singing refrains like, “Someone’s ‘ead restin’ on my knee, warm and tender as ‘e can be…” for at least a week afterward.

Until next Wednesday, stay picky! Your mind will thank you later.