MY FAIR LADY (1964)

In Ovid’s narrative poem Metamorphoses, a man from Cyprus named Pygmalion carved a beautiful statue from an ivory alabaster. It was so exquisite that he fell in love with his own creation. Uninterested in other women, Pygmalion waited until Aphrodite’s festival day, when he made a solemn request of the Goddess of Love: grant him eternal happiness by delivering him a woman just like his statue. When he returned home, he discovered that his gorgeous creation had come to life.

Can belief in something turn it into fact? Is it possible for faith to create life? It’s a question that psychologists Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson were curious to answer—with a more scientific approach. According to a seminal study they conducted in 1968, they discovered that a child’s performance improved if teachers were led to believe their academic prowess was greater than it actually was. As it turns out, one person’s expectations can lead to real-world results.

Yet, no one expects much from Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn). She’s a Cockney through and through, selling flowers on the street by haranguing unwilling customers. When she’s heard by Professor Higgins (Rex Harrison) one night, he laments the terrible quality of her English, suggesting it’s the only real social barrier between her current low status and high society. After he arrogantly asserts that he could change her life with nothing but elocution lessons, Colonel Hugh Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White) accepts his bet: he has six months to transform Eliza from a flower girl to a dame at an embassy ball.

George Cukor’s My Fair Lady is a little bit like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but inverted: one determined intellectual attempts to shape and mould human parts into something artificial, something unnaturally fabricated. However, instead of breathing life and suppleness into a corpse, our professor attempts to instil the cold, wooden demeanour and inflexible social mores into a passionate young woman. It’s not Frankenstein’s Monster—it’s Higgins’ Duchess.

There are several ways one could interpret My Fair Lady. Truthfully, I love this film. Even though it’s probably a little overlong and doesn’t quite make the most out of its premise, it’s massively entertaining and often very funny. However, in revisiting this classic musical drama, I was struck by how easily one can come to different readings of the same story: is this film self-aware and presenting a tongue-in-cheek satire of the ridiculous notions and behaviours that govern classist society? Or is it extolling the classism that dominates the narrative as the saving grace of a misguided, slovenly young woman?

Our leading man is Professor Higgins, a scholar of phonetics and self-professed expert in speech therapy, who decries the current state of the English language. When he first comes across Eliza’s cacophonous caterwauling, he is so affronted by her abuse of the language he holds dear to his heart that he bursts into song: “Norwegians learn Norwegian. The Greeks are taught their Greek. So why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?”

As he crucifies Eliza in public, informing everyone that her abominable accent is the only thing keeping her from rising in the world, language is shown as the central barrier to social mobility. Believing this to be the case, Eliza decides to do something about it, requesting Higgins provide her with elocution lessons. The film ultimately becomes a prolonged makeover sequence. However, instead of a focus on dress sense or hairdos, there’s a preoccupation with dressing up speech patterns, a sophisticated means of appealing to the ears of the elite.

To do this, Higgins utilises a slew of wacky-looking devices, which are his tried and tested methods of improving someone’s speech. He incorporates a xylophone to drill intonation, a fire-spurting apparatus to indicate correct breathing, and a mouthful of pebbles to train precise enunciation, like a Cockney version of Demosthenes. He is dogmatic in his endeavour to turn her from what he considers to be a vulgar, uncouth duckling to a well-spoken swan.

And when Higgins introduces her to stuck-up socialites, men fawn over her, with Freddy Eynsford-Hill (Jeremy Brett) taken by her natural charm; he is smitten by her noble savagery, her manner which is still unspoilt by the rigid codes that guide social interactions. But rather tellingly, people that surround Eliza couldn’t care less for her correct enunciation—they’re more interested in her physical beauty.

As this becomes increasingly clear, one can’t help but question if the whole story is a satirical look at the superficiality of high society. She’s wholeheartedly accepted into the much-esteemed aristocratic circles that are deified by both Higgins and Pickering, but she hardly ever has to say a word. She never once is challenged, nor forced to prove herself. Simply because she has an exquisite surface appeal, no one bothers to check what’s underneath.

That is, aside from the highly-touted imposterologist, who believes he can spot any plebeian purporting to be of a higher class. As he sleuths and hunts for the truth of Eliza’s origins, he asserts, with total certainty, that she’s a Romanian immigrant, perhaps of minor nobility—but definitely not English. As Higgins laments: “Silly people don’t know their silly business.” The inane mentality of high society is thus excoriated as being shallow, simplistic, and exclusionary. With all their pageantry and supposed sophistication, they all come across as little more than high school cliques, just with more money and probably fewer brains.

It’s for this reason that I view the film as self-aware and not a snobbish piece that turns up its nose to the lower classes. However, this ultimately depends on how you view the character of Higgins. Frequently, he dismisses her based purely on her lowly upbringing and current social status: “She’s so deliciously low, so horribly dirty.” While it’s sometimes said in jest, referring to her as a squashed cabbage leaf, he’s often repugnant in how he speaks to her. Whether in song or verse, he’s an overt chauvinist, an incorrigible misogynist.

For this reason, the fact that Higgins is so determined to teach Eliza etiquette appears rather ironic. Surely, between the pair of them, it is obvious who conducts themselves with greater decorum. Doolittle is shown to be more compassionate and thoughtful than the two who seek to better her. Regardless of how they pronounce their words, it’s the words they’re saying that count. As Eliza astutely observes: “The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated.”

In that single line, I think there’s evidence enough to suggest that the whole story is a tongue-in-cheek critique of the ridiculous social mores which dominate our societies, as well as antiquated, elitist mentalities, revealing them to be thick with cobwebs. But does Higgins learn from his experiences with Eliza? Or has he simply fallen in love with her, without having understood the true importance behind their partnership, or abandoned his limiting views of women?

I don’t know. He treats Eliza like an object for the majority of the story. Higgins does not quite view their relationship as that of a pedagogue and pupil, but more of an owner and a pet. In a song, he diminishes women by describing them as emotional saps and intellectually inferior to any man. There is an argument that he only does this because it is his last means of protection, fearing he is falling in love with a heartless guttersnipe—but I think it is a tenuous argument at best.

Towards the end of the story, he explains away his contemptible treatment of her as being his own foible, and not something that reflects on his opinion of her: “You see, the great secret, Eliza, is not a question of good manners, or bad manners, or any particular sort of manners… but having the same manner for all human souls.” However, while this would be a convenient explanation, it’s also obviously untrue; I didn’t see him call anyone a squashed cabbage leaf at the embassy.   

So perhaps it’s not entirely squeaky clean… but so what? Much of the film has not aged at all, and the parts that have deserve a pass for being well-intentioned. Not to mention being based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion, which is now over a century old. What’s more, I still find the film’s narrative arc rather touching, even if it is partially predictable. At its heart, it is an affecting tale of social mobility, a cinematic triumph where the rags-to-riches story feels neither trite nor filled with platitudes. Because who wouldn’t want a life of comfort? Would it not be lovely?

Furthermore, Cukor’s My Fair Lady is still marvellously entertaining. As a fish-out-of-water tale, it offers a lot of hearty laughs. Most notably, this involves Eliza discussing the death of her late aunt, who succumbed to influenza under suspicious circumstances. After all, what happened to her straw hat, the same hat which should have been passed down to Eliza in the will? “Somebody pinched it. And what I say is: them as pinched it, done her in. […] Them she lived with would have killed her for a hatpin, let alone a hat.”   

There are other instances of great dialogue, most of which are exclaimed by the exceptionally erudite and verbose Higgins. However, with a terrific supporting cast, our two lead performers are never left to carry the show alone. Pickering has a few brilliant lines—“It’s utterly indecent that you don’t need a glass of port!”—whereas the aptly named Alfred P. Doolittle (Stanley Holloway) charms his way through every scene he is in.

While Alan Jay Lerner’s screenplay earnestly excavates themes of class and sex, there are plenty of moments when these moments are explored in humorous ways, too. This includes Eliza’s first time taking a bath, which becomes so violent it feels like a scene straight out of Deliverance (1971): “It ain’t decent!” Additionally, both Higgins and Pickering’s attempts to avoid the self-proclaimed imposteroligist lend itself to farce, but any situational conflict which might have been found in these scenes is unfortunately wasted.

And of course, the songs remain as charming as ever. “With a Little Bit of Luck” remains a pleasant ode to a life spent as a carefree, work-shy freeloader. “I’m an Ordinary Man” reveals many of the difficulties that plague most heterosexual relationships. Meanwhile, my favourite is “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly”, which remains an emotive ballad, a plea for a better life replete with simple pleasures. Much like Judy Garland’s career-defining moment in The Wizard of Oz (1939), it’s easy to identify with someone’s hope for something better.

George Cukor, who was already 64 during production, did a sterling job in directing this lavish period piece. However, at almost three hours long, Cukor’s adaptation could have provided a deeper exploration of the romantic connection between Higgins and Eliza, as well as what made them tick outside their archetypal character outlines. By the end of the story, one cannot help but feel there was greater potential for them actually to get to know each other.

There is romance, with some sequences being genuinely touching. The best example of this is perhaps when Higgins realises, with great concern, how much he’s come to appreciate Eliza’s company: “And yet I’ve grown accustomed to the trace… of something in the air. Accustomed to her face…” It’s a poignant moment, one that’s slightly undercut by his glib response when he discovers she’s returned to be with him. Surely at that moment, they could stop with the pretence and just bloody kiss each other?

Nonetheless, My Fair Lady remains a very fun musical, even after 60 years. Hepburn is brilliant, with her cartoonish exclamations and incessant assurances of her working-class ethics: “I’m a good girl, I am!” Rex Harrison excels as Professor Henry Higgins, the supercilious academic who finds himself falling in love against his better judgement. Additionally, Stanley Holloway provides serviceable comic relief as Alfred P. Doolittle, a drunk by day, and moral philosopher by night (as well as a drunk).

Cukor’s film was so influential that it led to an early language A.I. program being named ‘ELIZA’. Instead of teaching people, we’re now teaching machines to mimic us. Will we end up falling in love with our mechanised counterparts? Only time will tell. However, one thing’s for sure: they’ll certainly be an awful lot harder to bribe with chocolates.

USA | 1964 | 173 MINUTES | 2.20:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: George Cukor.
writer: Alan Jay Lerner (based on ‘Pygmalion’ by George Bernard Shaw).
starring: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Gladys Cooper, Jeremy Brett & Theodore Bikel.