There is a gleaming ballroom scene, all cream and gilt and mirrors. There is a stunning re-creation of Covent Garden. The show opens up when the action suits opening up. Cukor paces his action so there is a continuous flow of movement, although long scenes play in relatively small settings. Lerner and Loewe’s songs gave the conversation variety. Cukor, knowing that motion does not depend on space, uses his camera for movement, and in many cases keeps his area tight. It thus fits the story without the story being interrupted. Hermes Pan, who did the choreography, creates movement, not dance in its usual sense. Cukor has even dispensed with dance production numbers in the customary sense. It is brilliant writing, as Loewe’s music is imperishable.Ĭukor and Lerner have not done the conventional treatment of a stage play made into a movie, i.e., erratically moved scenes outdoors for greater playing area or into bigger settings than the stage could manage. What Lerner did with his lyrics was to extend the comedy into music, to put the ideas into restatement of another form. Most of the dialogue, most of the jokes are Shaw’s. Lerner has been wise and modest in not attempting to improve on Shaw.
Lerner did the screenplay, as he did the book and lyrics for the stage version. Audrey Hepburn plays this girl, and Rex Harrison, repeating his great stage success, plays her mentor. She is seen for what she is, but dearly loved and respected. But, and this is dear to all hearts, in the end it is the girl who triumphs. It is the story, as everyone must know by now, of the flower girl who becomes a princess, the dirty Cockney guttersnipe who is taught to talk like a lady, to walk like a lady, to hold her place in high society with the nobs and swells. This was the theme of Shaw’s play Pygmalion, and remained intact when it became My Fair Lady, and has survived - again intact, but marvelously refurbished and glittering - in the screen version. It incarnates the dream of almost everyone: to be bewitched or transmuted and awake to be handsome or beautiful, and the beloved of one’s idol. It has perhaps the most nearly universal of themes. It is tremulous with sentiment and rich with an unusual love story.
It is such a pretty picture.īut far more is the fact that it is a witty film, and earthy film, with humor that ranges from the sophisticated conversation of George Bernard Shaw at his most recondite to Shaw at his most daring - with an assist from Alan Jay Lerner. Technicolor might have been invented for the vivid profusion of color that is splashed on the screen.
Visually there has never - not ever - been a motion picture to equal the breathtaking loveliness of My Fair Lady. George Cukor’s direction is as fresh and crisp as a first night, electric with dramatic tension, keyed high and held. 'The Shop Around the Corner': THR's 1940 Review
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