Of all the big musicals to win the Best Picture Oscar during the 1960s, My Fair Lady is probably the most classically structured and is probably better off for it. West Side Story is filled with innovative choreography and stylized from head to toe. The Sound of Music is home to countless beloved songs. Oliver! has gritty, dark tone. But My Fair Lady stands out, thanks to its familiar story, wonderful performances and those elegant costumes.
The reason for My Fair Lady feeling more like a classical Hollywood musical than the other ‘60s musicals is likely because the film has its roots in the 1950s. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe took George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion to the stage as a musical in 1956, with Rex Harrison as the egomaniacal phonetics expert Henry Higgins and Julie Andrews as his muse, the “gutter snipe” Eliza Doolittle. MGM had wanted to make a musical version, but weren’t able to get the rights before the end of the 1950s. Therefore, they hired Lerner and Loewe to make Gigi, which ended up winning the 1958 Best Picture Oscar and has countless similarities to My Fair Lady.
Jack L. Warner decided to shell out $5 million to get the film rights in 1962 and by November 1964, the film was in theaters. The result is a delightful film, even though Andrews was replaced by the beautiful Audrey Hepburn. Director George Cukor got an astonishing and moving performance out of her, but once word got out that she wasn’t actually doing the singing in the final cut, her Oscar chances were gone. It’s an absolute shame, because singers had been doing the singing behind the scenes for actors in musicals for decades. But that news, combined with the fact that Andrews’ gave an incredible performance in Mary Poppins, kept Hepburn from even being nominated.
Anyway, with all that controversy relegated to trivia, My Fair Lady reveals itself to be one of Cukor’s crowning achievements. Despite its three-hour run time, the film never feels slowed down by its musical numbers. Sure, “Get Me To The Church On Time” slows down the trajectory to the climax, but it’s too much fun to see Stanley Holloway just enjoy life as Eliza’s father. Cukor and cinematographer Harry Stradling also lovingly photograph the elegant costumes and production design by Cecil Beaton. You can’t imagine this film without Beaton’s work.
My Fair Lady was first released on Blu-ray in 2011, but that edition received mixed reviews from fans. CBS, which now holds the rights (there’s a complicated behind-the-scenes story about how it went from Warner Bros. to CBS that is for another discussion), released the film on Blu-ray again on Oct. 27, using a brand new 4K restoration based on the famous 1994 restoration by Robert A. Harris. This edition also puts all the bonus material on a second Blu-ray disc and includes a DVD of the film.
The bonus materials cover every aspect of the filmmaking process, as well as some fascinating contemporary footage from 1963 and 1964. Unfortunately, the informative commentary recorded by Harris and others involved in the film is not included here. So, you’ll still have to hold on to the previous DVD special edition or the 2011 Blu-ray to have that.
My Fair Lady is an absolutely essential film for any collection, especially with this new Blu-ray release that presents it loverly-er than ever. It might be a 50-year-old musical, but My Fair Lady is still more than fair.
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