My Fair Lady review

 Number 393 on the top 1000 films of all time is George Cukor's 1964 musical comedy-drama 'My Fair Lady.'

Based on George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, My Fair lady follows Cockney flower-seller Eliza Dolittle (Audrey Hepburn.) Wanting to improve her spoken-English and prospects in life, she employs noted phoneticist Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) to help her speak more like a lady. An unlikely friendship occurs. Stanley Holloway co-stars as Eliza's father and Gladys Cooper plays Henry's mother.

My Fair Lady swept the awards season being nominated for almost forty awards and winning no less than twenty-four. This included eight Oscars with Rex Harrison winning the Best Actor, George Cukor winning Best Director and the film itself winning Best Picture. Stanley Holloway and Gladys Cooper were also nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Actress.

If you think Audrey Hepburn was conspicuous by her absence, you'd be right. She wasn't nominated at all. This snubbing was considered egregious at the time and even more so now. Some argued it was resentment of how she replaced Julie Andrews who famously played Dolittle in the stage play. Others said it was because of how Hepburn's singing which was largely dubbed by Marni Nixon, despite how Hepburn expected to do much of the singing herself.

I found it strange how you can nominate My Fair Lady for practically every Oscar going, but you don't nominate Hepburn. As a Londoner, I found her Cockney accent exaggerated, borderline cartoonish, but she was certainly charming enough as the flower-seller. True, Eliza was the same air-headed, scatter-brained character that proves there is more to her than meets the eye that Hepburn always plays, but she does play the role well.

Rex Harrison was also good as the male lead despite how he spoke rather than sung most of his songs. He also played Henry Higgins in the stage play winning the Tony award. Despite his initial reluctance of working with Audrey Hepburn, the two of them were good together. Their relationship was central to the film, but it was enjoyable watching them develop from begrudging allies into something closer to lovers.

Mr Fair Lady also won Oscars for Best Costume, Art Direction and Cinematography and these were well-earned. It is set in 1912 London and it looked great on-screen.

This final criticism will sound silly considering how it was a musical and it won an Oscar for Best Original score, but there was too much singing. This heavily slowed down the pace, bloating out the film to almost three hours long. True some songs have become absolute classics like "Wouldn't it Be Loverly" and "Get me to the Church on Time," but most of them seemed like vehicles to deliver ham-fisted exposition.

Yes, there was too much singing, it was too long and Audrey Hepburn was the recipient of one of the biggest Oscar snubs ever, but my Fair lady was an enjoyable enough film. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm getting married in the morning, ding dong, the bells are going to chime...