Friday, March 21, 2014

Flick Pick: My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady
(Warner Bros., 1964)

Absolutely spectacular George Cukor film version of Lerner & Loewe's Broadway musical, itself a musical version of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. Audrey Hepburn shines in the role made famous by Julie Andrews; Andrews having been passed over because Jack Warner wasn't convinced she had the necessary screen presence for the role was busy making Mary Poppins down the street at Disney Studios, for which performance she won Best Actress.
My Fair Lady, meanwhile, came off beautifully, raked in returns at the box office, garnering eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor to Rex Harrison in a perfectly marvelous performance as Professor Higgins.
As proof that Hollywood currently can do nothing but generate an endless procession of unimaginative punchbowl turds, persistent halting efforts indicate that some bunch of idiots wishes to remake this classic, with an equally talentless procession of names tied to the project, the luckier of which will jump ship before going down with it.
This version is the movie for the ages, and remaking it would be nothing if not an attempt to reproduce the Mona Lisa by fingerpainting a by-the-numbers take-home edition.

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