MFL is horrid. First off, taking the dialogue of Shaw, generally argued as the second greatest playwright in the history of modern English (Shakespeare being the undebated #1) and corrupting both his words and its rhythms in order to shoehorn music into it is beyond retarded.

Second, it’s just disgustingly miscast on virtually every level, even more so when compared to the spectacular casting of Pygmalion.

Audrey Hepburn is just so blatantly wrong as Eliza Doolittle it’s not funny. Yes, she’s utterly gorgeous. She’s TOO gorgeous. Anyone thinks for a moment, they’ll realize that she could NEVER be a guttersnipe. Anyone can take one look at her and know that if they would wipe even a single smudge of dirt off her face with a spit-wetted hankie, it would be unavoidably obvious that she’s gorgeous. Contrast that with Wendy Hiller, who has an unusual face and does a perfect job of playing “both sides” of that coin.

But it doesn’t stop there — Rex Harrison is downright vile as Higgins, he clearly does not grasp anything that the man is about, playing Higgins as a cold, emotionless fish. Leslie Howard, on the other hand, completely understood what Higgins was about, he was a very, very passionate man who has sublimated his intense passions into a love for language. And when Eliza becomes the embodiment of his passions, he falls for her completely.

And the rest of the casting is the same — Wilfred Lawson is a charming delight as Eliza’s father, he looks slovenly and as though he belongs in the gutter, until he, too, gets cleaned up by circumstance, and finds misery in responsibility. Lawson’s speech as he attempts to shakedown Higgins is flat out marvelous.

Even Freddie, played by David Tree, is a perfect nebbish — exactly right for the character — compared with Jeremy Brett’s far too good looking overdressed boytoy:

David Tree:
http://images3.cinema.de/imedia/6304/1716304,XTteq5tCL1ZYikZWN1CmGf6KVD1gQ6R2meXO0DAH4mOc3wmyNLfyky96mlvjyEAAHdZyFRurIgqf1RiDHc2JUg==.jpg

Jeremy Brett
http://imagehost.vendio.com/a/35104116/aview/img051_019.jpg

And that’s really part of it — MFL is too damned PRETTY everywhere. EVERYONE is too clean, too good looking, even the “wretched poor” are far better looking than they ought to be.

Sorry, MFL is a horrid movie. Give me The Music Man, or even The Sound of Music, if you want to promote that era’s musicals. MFL is just bad.

😉

Isn’t it interesting that, despite writing this, Shaw was a Fabian Socialist?

the whole of it is a story that your genetics and such matter not, but that if one changes the circumstances and such of anothers enviornment, they change and so, environment is what makes you you, not your genes and so forth

a cannon of the left is the whole of it…
and one should study the method and construction of such things for consumption and how they work, or else all one is doing is discussing how whateer it is, isnt how you imagine it, and are so then confused.

🙂 . Thanks, will fix.

The middle class liberals I know, make great speeches about caring about the poor. What they really mean is that other middle class people should subsidy the and their wants.