OK---I'll admit it...I love a good musical. Camelot...Phantom...Fiddler...my favorite, Les Miserables. And My Fair Lady (1964) is a very good musical. Starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn, the film version was wonderful, with great songs and elaborate sets. Just loved it.
Hepburn was beautiful and elegant, as she always seemed to be, and seems to be Eliza Doolittle, street gamin, taken in by the eminent linguist Professor Henry Higgins as he tries to shape her by language into a proper English lady.
Now there are so many subtexts to this show. The social hierarchy of English society, the institute of marriage, but one I would like to touch on: are Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering gay? to which I say...of course!
C'mon...2 older men, living together with no interest in women. They love to dress Eliza up though, eat fine food and drink port. They even sing a song asking why can't women be more like men! A-hem? OK, they may be repressed or closeted or whatever, but they are fruits! And Eliza is the original (and I use this totally politically incorrect term) fag hag. C'mon...father issues out the ying yang...abandoment issues. Puh-leeese.
Now, this does not make me enjoy the movie less...in fact, I enjoy it more becaue it makes a hell of a lot more sense that way. Otherwise, it is just weird. But with Higgins and Pickering as repressed gays and Eliza as their fag hag...it is a wonderful and beautiful story. (And to complete my analysis, there is a part in the end where they both say they don't see each other in a romantic way). I am just saying...
My Fair Lady is a wonderful musical...fun and elegant and full of great songs. And very modern if you look at it in the right light.
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