My Fair Lady (Two-Disc Special Edition)
by George Cukor, Suzie Galler
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Actor: Audrey Hepburn, Gladys Cooper, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-WhiteDirector: George Cukor, Suzie Galler
Brand: Warner Brothers
Writer: Suzie Galler
Producer: Jack L. Warner
Producer: James C. Katz
Writer: Alan Jay Lerner
Writer: George Bernard Shaw
Writer: Roy McDonald
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.20:1
Running Time: 173 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-02-03
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of My Fair Lady (Two-Disc Special Edition)
DVD Review: A masterpiece of the American musical theatre
Summary: 5 Stars
Fifty years ago this week, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's incomparable MY FAIR LADY opened on Broadway-and ran for several years. When producer Jack L. Warner personally produced a movie version, he did almost everything right-the whole show at 173 minutes (including roadshow intermission and music ends), in proscenium arch Super Panavision 70, with Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway repeating their stage roles. And he brought in a director he had worked with before (A STAR IS BORN in 1954) and who was renowned for elegant sophistication, George Cukor. But Warner may have made a big mistake in not casting the Broadway Eliza Doolittle, Julie Andrews, for the movie, going instead with young Audrey Hepburn. Revenge was both bitter and sweet-the movie got twelve Oscar nominations but none for Hepburn as Actress, while Andrews (in her film debut) won the Actress Oscar...for MARY POPPINS. Adding insult to insult, Hepburn's singing voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon in one of the worst-kept secrets in 1963 Hollywood as the movie was being filmed at Warner Bros. And Jeremy Brett's towering "On the Street Where You Live", one of the greatest songs in musical theater history, was also dubbed--in a very well kept secret, not revealed until a 1994 documentary. Now why, pray tell, does one cast actors in a musical whose song voices will have to be dubbed? Actually, Hepburn and Brett are wonderful as Eliza and Freddy in the movie. And Andrews has her Oscar as ample compensation. Maybe she would have won an Oscar for MY FAIR LADY. We will never know.
I am reviewing the 40th anniversary restoration of MY FAIR LADY on letterboxed double disk DVD. The box says "High definition transfer from the 1994 restoration picture and sound elements." Even with just stereo headphones and a 27" television in a bedroom, the movie looks and sounds better than it ever has. The loverly songs seem to jump out at you, and the color is magnificent. This was a mammoth restoration job by the great team of Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz, who initially had to deal with a negative that looked like crumpled and cracked bacon with no color left. The preservation job they have done, documented on the lengthy and extensive 1994 documentary hosted by Jeremy Brett on disk two, deserves a Special Oscar.
Man, I love this movie! I could watch it again tonight for four hours (including bonus material), just for the glorious songs and the witty story--Rex Harrison and Wilfred Hyde-White, Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering, are phonetic experts who hire a young cockney flower girl, Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle, to pose as a duchess. That involves tons of dictation and phonics lessons. Much of the dialogue is clearly taken directly from George Bernard Shaw's PYGMALION, filmed in 1938 with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. Interestingly, both of these movies, three decades apart, where photographed by Harry Stradling. As Eliza slowly becomes someone elegant and smart, we get some of the most beautiful songs in the American musical theatre, including "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" "I'm an Ordinary Man," "The Rain in Spain," and especially the soaring "I Could Have Danced All Night", my personal favorite song in the whole show. Meanwhile, back in Covent Garden, Eliza's father Alfie (Oscar nominee Stanley Holloway) tears up the wide screen with "A Little Bit of Luck". The renovated and regally dressed new Eliza is a hit at the Ascot races, until something very funny happens.
Jeremy Brett, or a song double, gets to do my other favorite song in the show, "On the Street Where You Live", on both sides of the theatrical intermission and Embassy Waltz. Let's talk about Oscar-winning sets by Gene Allen and costumes by Cecil Beaton (who egotistically once tried to take credit for the sets also). We spend a lot of time in a Wimple Street flat with a lot of book shelves and ladders from floor to two story ceiling. Cukor (or choreographer Hermes Pan) seems to know where to put three or five people at one time to make a static setting interesting. The Ascot races are all white and black and gray, very elegant and striking; Beaton's costumes are magnificent. And Allen's designs for Higgins' mother's (Gladys Cooper) apartment are so stylish--all white, with plants upstage, Eliza in a pink dress, and Higgins in a gray suit.
Part two of MY FAIR LADY is only about 75 minutes, but manages to have reprises of "Just You Wait", "On the Street Where You Live," "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" in a pre-dawn Covent Garden, the new "Show Me" by Eliza/Marni Nixon, and Holloway's show-stopping "Get Me to the Church on Time". We end with Eliza choosing Higgins over Freddy (watch for key dialogue in mom's apartment with Higgins and Eliza revealing honest feelings) and Higgins' poignant soliloquy "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" on the same Wimpole Street set where Freddy does "On the Street Where You Live". It is a satisfying ending to a fabulous show, filmed to perfection by an army of pros on both sides of the camera.
And do spend some time with the disk two bonuses on the letterboxed 2004 double disk. My only complaint is that the informative 1994 documentary has the movie clips in squeezed or pan/scan format and not wide-screen. It is a bit ludicrous to have restorers Harris and Katz talk about "restoring a lady" if we cannot see that "lady" in her Super Panavision glory. But that's a minor flaw in a very good documentary. It is chilling to think we almost lost MY FAIR LADY to the ravages of time. Fortunately, the movie itself is at the correct 2.20 wide-screen ratio, so watch this hour documentary before viewing the incomparable restored film. You may even want to put on the English subtitles command so that you can sing along to some of the loveliest songs ever.
Description of My Fair Lady (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 11/11/2008Hollywood's legendary "woman's director," George Cukor (The Women, The Philadelphia Story), transformed Audrey Hepburn into street-urchin-turned-proper-lady Eliza Doolittle in this film version of the Lerner and Loewe musical. Based on George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, My Fair Lady stars Rex Harrison as linguist Henry Higgins (Harrison also played the role, opposite Julie Andrews, on stage), who draws Eliza into a social experiment that works almost too well. The letterbox edition of this film on video certainly pays tribute to the pageantry of Cukor's set, but it also underscores a certain visual stiffness that can slow viewer enthusiasm just a tad. But it's really star wattage that keeps this film exciting, that and such great songs as "On the Street Where You Live" and "I Could Have Danced All Night." Actor Jeremy Brett, who gained a huge following later in life portraying Sherlock Holmes, is quite electric as Eliza's determined suitor. --Tom Keogh
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