No one would ever accuse "My Fair Lady" of being light on its feet, and the restored version of the 3 1/2 -hour 1964 behemoth that has just opened on the big screen at the Senator sometimes feels like an attack by the Third Armored Division with full air and artillery support. Still, it packs considerable entertainment wallop.
Adapted from the famous Lerner-Loewe musical of the '50s, which itself was adapted from George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," the movie was directed by the elderly George Cukor, a specialist in "women's pictures." Cukor's true gift was probably empathy with nervous, unsure performers, and he did a marvelous job coaxing the heretofore non-musical Audrey Hepburn through her paces.
Still, to see the movie now is to mourn somewhat the absence, even 30 years later, of Julie Andrews in the role that made her a Broadway star. Julie Andrews was authentically talented as a singer and dancer -- Hepburn, singing voice dubbed and dance reduced to a few nervous steps, wasn't -- but more important, she had a toughness and a believability as a cockney that the wren-boned and aristocratic Hepburn lacks.
When the great Hepburn contorts her utterly perfect face to mutter some blurt of cockney angst -- "Cawwwwww, Guv'nor" -- from behind a few dabs of strategically placed dirt smudges, the great Hepburn is touching but still every single centimeter the great Hepburn. It feels less like a performance than an appearance: a role imagined from the outside in, impressive in details but utterly hollow at the psychological level. This isn't helped when she throws back her head and Marni Nixon's amplified, smoothly professional but textureless voice comes blasting out (although Hepburn sings "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" in this restored version).
And, as a musical director, Cukor is no great shakes. His bigger numbers -- cockney street scenes for "A Little Bit of Luck" and the races at Ascot for a number whose name didn't stick in my head -- feel moribund and graceless, with awkward, overdressed extras standing around stupidly. Only the intimate numbers -- "Rain in Spain," "I Could Have Danced All Night," "Let a Woman in Your Life," for example -- really crackle with energy, and that's all supplied by the performers, particularly Rex Harrison.
If any man could project smugness, imperial disdain and utter contempt for those unfortunate humans unlucky enough not to be him better than this world-class English cad, it could only have been George Sanders mean-drunk on a particularly dry tawny port. Harrison, unbelievably sexy and unbelievably arrogant, radiating the Western canon from every pore, is the rock on which the church of "My Fair Lady" is built.
In fact, if any monument stands to Dead White Maleism, it has to be this one. I know that in the last act he gets a mild comeuppance when he realizes he's in love with Liza, but the punishment really doesn't fit the crime. To invoke this standard, of course, is to judge the works of 30 years ago by the standards of today. But it's clear that at some level, for Lerner and Loewe and for Harrison and even for dear old Cukor, the white male's illusion of central position was an unquestioned assumption, even if projected in the allegedly "safe" device of irony.
Harrison's deep glee in his naturally superior role in civilization and his utter confidence that all problems can be fixed if only the lesser breeds can be elevated to learn to speak his language left a bitter, coppery taste in my mouth. He's Colonel Blimp, without the puttees but just as full of rancid hot air. He could be the poster boy of the Aryan Nation.
"My Fair Lady"
Starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison
Directed by George Cukor
Released by 20th Century Fox
Unrated
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