... that being the late 50s to the late 60s. They don't particularly age well .Looking back on them in the context of the 1960s they seem downright anachronistic. . At least this film is not offensive. Gigi, which won Best Picture of 1958, has a young woman's relatives trying to turn her into a prostitute, from which she wisely figures out there is no coming back, while Maurice Chevalier musically ogles little girls from the shelter of the bushes. That one didn't age well in a bunch of ways.
This one has fabulous music, magnificent art design, quite a bit of great dry humor, and perfect casting - except I really wish James Cagney had taken the part of Eliza's father. It would have made a great bookend for his film career. The direction is perfectly on target for late career George Cukor. He won Best Director Oscar for this and didn't make another film for five years.
Rex Harrison certainly deserved his Best Actor Oscar as misanthropic phoneticist Henry Higgins. He is both stern and humorous, his vocals in both song and word are alive and nothing less than perfect. Also, Wilfrid Hyde-White as Pickering adds a great deal to the film, and I appreciate him more on successive viewings.
Thus it is hard to give a film with such great production values less than a 7/10. I have a couple of problems with it. First, it is just too long. Clocking in at two hours and fifty minutes, there is just too much movie for too little story. Pygmalian, starring Leslie Howard, was perfect at ninety minutes, and I actually prefer that film to this one. Second, I don't like the resolution because there isn't one. After all of that squabbling at Higgins' mother's house, after Higgins realizing he has "grown accustomed to her face", the end is just a let down. Had it gone on any longer it would have become Season Four of Moonlighting.
