Best Picture Rewind: My Fair Lady
Was 1964's Best Picture Winner Fair... Or Foul?
By Tom Houseman
April 5, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The Movie: My Fair Lady, Directed by George Cukor, Written by Alan Jay Lerner
What it Won
Best Picture
Best Director
Best Actor in a Leading Role, George Harrison
Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color
Best Cinematography, Color
Best Costume Design, Color
Best Sound
Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment
Also Nominated For
Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Stanley Holloway
Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Gladys Cooper
Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium
Best Film Editing
Its Competition
Becket
Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Mary Poppins
Zorba the Greek
Other Notable Films Nominated for Awards
Goldfinger
A Hard Day's Night
Marriage Italian Style
The Night of the Iguana
The Pink Panther
Robin and the Seven Hoods
Seven Days in May
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
What I Brought Into It
If there is one thing I am as obsessed with as movies it is musical theater, and yet I had fairly limited familiarity with this classic musical before seeing the film. I knew the basics of the story, of course, partially because of how often it is parodied by comedies (an early Family Guy episode spoofs the show particularly well), and I had heard virtually every song, but never in any kind of order or context. I had a vague understanding that Eliza had a love interest, but I didn't know that the song “The Street Where You Live” was from this show. I also didn't know that her father was important to the plot.
But my expectations were extremely high, as they tend to be for adaptations of classic musicals. Sometimes my expectations are met or exceeded, as they were with West Side Story, Cabaret, and Chicago, and sometimes I find myself profoundly underwhelmed, as I did with The Phantom of the Opera, Sweeney Todd, and Rent. Very often my high expectations burn me, but I feel that if a director is working with a great stage musical they should be able to bring to life on screen. It shouldn't be that difficult. And yet...
What I Took Out of It
My Fair Lady is an absolute mess. I mean, of all of the ways to bring a musical from the stage to the screen, it seems as if this was the worst possible way to do it. Director George Cukor clearly decided that since the stage production was so popular that he would make the film seem as much like a stage musical as possible. The problem is that what works well on the stage rarely works on the screen. If something is obviously fake on stage it will feel theatrical, but if something is obviously fake in a movie it will just seem ridiculous. How can you take a scene in a film seriously when a bunch of characters walk through a square, pause randomly for dramatic effect, and then all start moving again in unison?
The opening scene features a group of people all standing around watching some guy sing about how terribly poor people speak. Seriously, they just kind of stand there, listening raptly but never interrupting, and then immediately disperse after he is finished. It is the sort of scene that would work well on stage but comes off as absurd and distracting in a film. The staged aspect reminded me of the film adaptation of the stage musical The Producers, which failed to capture the comedy of the stage musical by too literally translating the style of the show. But Susan Stroman had the excuse of being a theater director making her big screen debut and being woefully unprepared for the job. George Cukor had a long, storied film career - which included four Best Director nominations - to his name before taking on My Fair Lady. He should know better.
There are a few good moments in the film, and overall it is not terrible, but it is definitely way, way too long. There is no reason why this fairly straightforward story needs to be told in three hours, with several dialogue-heavy scenes stretching and dragging long past the point when they are no longer welcome. It is likely that these scenes do not feel too long on the stage (although three hours is excessive even for a stage musical) but because the camera adds a sense of reality to the setting it makes these scenes seem far too long and far too uninteresting. The accepted length on songs in movies is also much shorter than it is on stage, especially when it is a solo with very little action. When Eliza sings “I Could Have Danced All Night” while not doing much of anything, I felt that the song was at least a verse too long. I do not mean to unfairly single out that sequence, though, as every song should have been at least a verse shorter.
But beyond the abysmal failure that is the translation of the story from stage to screen, my main criticism is how blatantly hateful the protagonists are. Henry Higgins might be the most obnoxious, hateful, misogynistic asshole in film history. This guy makes Mark Zuckerberg seem like Ronald McDonald. It was difficult to watch any scene that he was in and resist the urge to punch him in the face through my TV screen. Eliza wasn't much better, also a fairly cloying, selfish character. I also found it hard to take Audrey Hepburn's transformation from street bum to high society lady seriously, considering how atrocious her cockney accent is. When she is finally, miraculously able to lift her accent, it comes off as a person who is obviously wearing a mask suddenly reveals that they have had a real face underneath it the whole time. It's not much of a shock, but it is welcome.
Did It Deserve to Win Best Picture?
Watching My Fair Lady has given me an additional reason to get around to finally rewatching Crash. I have mostly blocked that abhorrent film from my memory ever since walking out half-way through, but of the Best Picture winners that I have seen in their entirety, My Fair Lady is by far the worst. Plenty of Best Picture winners are too long, but none are so plainly unable to fill their time with anything remotely entertaining or interesting. Dances with Wolves had previously been my pick for worst Best Picture winner, but at least that film has cinematic qualities that make it worth watching and some memorable action sequences.
I cannot imagine how anybody, either in 2012 or 1964, can claim that My Fair Lady is a better film than Dr. Strangelove. If you do have an argument to make in favor of the former, please make it in email form, but if you explain it to me in person I will probably punch you in the face. Dr. Strangelove is a masterpiece in terms of story, structure, and style, while My Fair Lady is a cinematic sewage pit. My Fair Lady is not even the best musical nominated for Best Picture in 1964, as it is vastly inferior to the delightful and magical Mary Poppins.
Did My Fair Lady deserve any of the accolades hurled at it by the Academy? I cannot fathom how it won an award for its painfully fake looking sets, but I will admit that the costumes were quite impressive, and certainly deserving of a nomination. In particular, Eliza's dresses are stunningly beautiful and effectively serve as a marker of her transformation. The only performance that is worthy of even consideration for an Academy Award nomination is Stanley Holloway as Eliza's father. Of all of the irritating and unlikeable characters in the film, Holloway is the only one who brings charm and humor to his part, doing the best he can with a fairly one-dimensional role. So out of the 12 nominations and eight wins that My Fair Lady had (more Oscars than either Schindler's List or Patton; For shame, Academy!), I think it deserved two nominations and one win, as well as consideration for the title of least deserving Best Picture winner of all time.