The Best Picture Countdown #37: My Fair Lady (1964)

Director: George Cukor
Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison

My Fair Lady is the kind of film many great directors make towards the end of their career, when their reputation is so well established that they can get away with big, self-indulgent projects. This adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion is kind of fussy and a little longer than it has to be, but it does have a certain amount of charm – films by George Cukor or starring Audrey Hepburn have that tendency. So sit back, relax, and let Rex Harrison talk-sing his way into your heart.

This is the story of Henry Higgins (Harrison) and the bet he makes with Col. Hugh Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White) that he can teach any woman to speak “properly” enough to be passed off as an aristocrat at a ball. His project is Cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle (Hepburn), who seems to be making little progress as she endures Higgins’ methods until one day she suddenly begins to speak with a posh accent. Higgins is thrilled and decides to test her ability by taking her to Ascot Racecourse, only to watch her slip into her regional dialect while cheering her horse during the race. Luckily Higgins dislikes the pretension of his peers so he finds her lapse rather funny.

At the ball Eliza is a success, even fooling the expert Zoltan Karpathy (Theodore Bikel), but the outcome ultimately sours the relationship between Eliza and Higgins because he gets all the credit and she gets none. Eliza leaves but finds that she no longer belongs in the world she grew up in and becomes engaged to Freddy Eynsford-Hill, whom she met at the races. When he learns of the engagement Higgins is incensed and then surprised because, as he realizes, he’s “grown accustomed to her face.” Fortunately for him, despite his being a grumpy, arrogant misogynist, Eliza has grown rather accustomed to his face as well.

On the film’s release critics were fairly divided about Hepburn’s portrayal of Eliza, but I’ve always thought that she does just fine here. It’s by no means my favourite of her performances, but I think that she more than holds her own against Harrison, who would go on to win an Oscar for this role. I don’t know if I really buy the pair as a romantic couple but, then again, Pygmalion playwright George Bernard Shaw never intended for Higgins and Eliza to have anything but a platonic relationship. The pair is rounded out by a terrific supporting cast, two of whom – Stanley Halloway and Gladys Cooper, playing Eliza’s father and Higgins’ mother, respectively – would receive Oscar nominations.

There is a lot of talent involved in My Fair Lady, both in front of and behind the camera, but it is a deeply flawed film. It doesn’t flow easily towards a narrative resolution and sometimes stops dead in order to show off the costumes or art direction. Those elements of the film are, admittedly, gorgeous but the intense emphasis on them makes it seem like the film is less interested in telling a story than it is in being an art installation or a celebration of hats. Everything in the film looks exquisite but it tends to get a bit caught up in admiring its own production, losing sight of the forest as it concentrates on the trees.

All that being said, the film is extremely charming, charming enough that it isn’t totally weighted down by its excesses. It fits in fairly easily amongst other films which won Best Picture during the same period, a period in which AMPAS seemed to love nothing more than to reward bigness. This was also the period in which the studio system was in the final phase of its decline and it would only be a couple of years after My Fair Lady’s win that AMPAS’s taste would begin to turn increasingly towards tighter, more socially conscious, auteur driven films. This is sort of like the last gasp of a dying era and, as far as that goes, this is a fairly elegant note to go out on.

Oscarstravaganza: Breakfast At Tiffany's

* * *

Winner: Best Original Song, 1961
Director: Blake Edwards
Starring: Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Patricia Neal

Isn't it strange when a movie inspires as much love in you as it does loathing? For example, I love Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany's and there are many things about the film itself I find admirable but I can't ignore the flat out racist presence of Mickey Rooney as Holly Golightly's upstairs neighbor. It's an ugly, ugly aspect of the film and seriously hinders my ability to watch and enjoy it. I know that it was a different time and everything but damn.

Hepburn stars as Holly Golightly, a party girl looking for her golden ticket in the form of a rich man who will see to her needs and set her up in the lap of luxury. She has several contenders for the role but has yet to land one perhaps because, deep down, she's not really that kind of girl after all. She gains a kindred spirit when Paul Varjak (George Peppard) moves into her apartment building. He's a writer with one novel under his belt who is being kept by the wealthy Mrs. Failenson (the always great Patricia Neal), a fact which essentially puts him and Holly in the same social position. Their unique understanding of each other's lifestyle, and their natural attraction to each other, prompts them to develop a friendship that inevitably progresses to love.

In many ways Holly and Paul are perfect for each other. They're both young and beautiful and have learned to make the most of the value that others have placed on their youth and beauty, and they genuinely enjoy each other's company. The problem comes down to economics: they can't afford each other. Paul is willing to give up the meal ticket he has in Mrs. Failenson, but Holly continues trying to secure herself a wealthy husband and sets her sights on Jose da Silva Pereira (Jose Luis de Villalonga). Her decision naturally causes a rift in her relationship with Paul and the two go their separate ways but, since this is ultimately a love story, they will of course eventually find their way back to each other after a few trials and tribulations.

Loosely based on the novella by Truman Capote, who reportedly disliked the adaptation and especially Hepburn's portrayal of Holly, the film is by turns frothy and quite serious. Holly parties a lot and her lifestyle occasionally seems frivolous but it's all really a mask for her insecurities. Afraid that she herself isn't good enough, she has invented herself as Holly Golightly and puts on a show for her friends, acquaintances and lovers, playing the part of the carefree girl who flits from room to room and relationship to relationship, a shimmering mirage that disappears as soon as you reach out for it. The truth is that she's struggling inside, torn between her desire to stay in one place and be real and her fear that if she does the real her will be rejected. I'm a big fan of Hepburn's in general but I particularly like this performance because it allows her to display a bit of edge and take on a character who is more complex than the characters she had played up until this point in her career. Always an engaging screen presence, she seems especially so as Holly, who is so flawed and tries so hard to mask it. I'm less keen on Peppard's performance, as I find him a bit dull, but between them Hepburn and Neal, who tackles her role with a relaxed feistiness, save the day as far as the acting goes.

While I like Breakfast At Tiffany's quite a bit, I have to admit that it hasn't aged quite so well. Parts of it play like a time capsule capturing a social scene that may only ever have existed in fiction - a forgiveable sin offset by the less forgiveable presence of Mickey Rooney's Mr. Yunioshi, Holly's excitable upstairs neighbor. Despite the fact that Hollywood often likes to crow about how much farther ahead of the times it is than the rest of the world, this sort of thing isn't terribly unusual in older films. Katherine Hepburn played a Chinese woman in Dragon Seed, Paul Muni and Luise Rainer played Chinese characters in The Good Earth, Marlon Brando played a Japanese character in Teahouse of the August Moon - long after blackface became outmoded and acknowledged as offensive it was still considered just fine for white actors to play at being Asian. That's bad enough but the portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi stands out as worse than some of the examples I just gave because it is so mean spiritted. The makeup in films like Dragon Seed and The Good Earth might be offensive, but the characters are still defined as being noble and heroic. Contrast that with the buck-toothed, "me so solly" Mr. Yunioshi who exists solely for race based mockery. It takes me right out of the movie every time it shows up and it's a major drag on a film that is otherwise pretty enjoyable and well put together.

Great Last Scenes: Charade

Year: 1963
Director: Stanley Donen
Great Because...: Well, for one thing you can't go wrong with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn - two of the most effortlessly charming actors ever to grace the screen. For another, it contains one of my favourite last lines ever. After discovering (finally) Grant's real identity, Hepburn exclaims: "Oh I love you, Adam, Alex, Peter, Brian, whatever your name is! I love you! I hope we have a lot of boys so we can name them all after you!"

Reggie Lampert is in a whole mess of trouble. Her husband has just turned up dead, several nefarious characters are after her for some money her husband supposedly had, and a tall, dark and handsome man who is not what he seems has recently entered her life. At first this man claims to be Peter Joshua, later Alexander Dyle, Adam Canfield, and finally Brian Crookshank (Regina: "Serves me right if that's the one I'm stuck with"). All Regina knows for sure is that there's a Mrs. Joshua/Dyle/Canfield but they're divorced (but then again, maybe there isn't or maybe they aren't).

In the midst of all the turmoil in her life, there's no one that Reggie can really trust or turn to. Certainly she probably shouldn't trust the man with the ever shifting persona and yet she does, even as she's questioning his motives, even as she's questioning whether or not he's responsible for the dead bodies that have started to pile up. As she peels away layer upon layer of his identity, she's vindicated in the trust she has for him - it's the trust she places in someone else that nearly gets her killed.

If there was ever any doubt before, the final scene lays bare the fact that the plot is really secondary to giving two charismatic actors a chance to play off each other. The question of how it is that the bad guy was able to pose so successfully as a good guy is dismissed with a pretty lame explanation (it basically comes down to an embassy building with such lax security that someone could waltz in and take over an office while everyone else is ouut to lunch) and the film quickly moves on to what is really important: getting Grant and Hepburn together. The scene plays out with romance and humor (love the face Grant makes when Hepburn see him sitting behind the desk), giving two delightful characters an ending they absolutely deserve, with the added bonus that the scene is still able to incorporate the "is there a Mrs.?... but we're divorced" running gag into it. It's the perfect ending for an uncommonly charming thriller.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Two For The Road (1967)

Director: Stanley Donen
Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney

“What kind of people just sit in a restaurant and don’t say one word to each other?” Joanna (Audrey Hepburn) asks. “Married people,” Mark (Albert Finney) replies. Two For The Road is a romantic comedy/drama about how two people can at once want the same and different things. It centers on Mark and Joanna and shows us their relationship in a kaleidoscopic way, jumping back and forth through time so that we meet them at various stages of their relationship, always while they’re on vacation in the same parts of Europe. It’s a narratively innovative and clever story against which Hepburn and Finney deliver charmingly complex performances.

Mark and Joanna meet as college students. She's travelling with friends, he's backpacking through Europe, planning to sleep outdoors and spend as little money as possible. She's smitten, he's not... quite. They end up travelling the rest of the way together and, in the process, she wins him over. Later, they're married and travelling with friends - his ex-girlfriend, her husband, and their precociously annoying daughter. Later still, they have a child of their own and he's working for a French businessman. And finally, their last trip together on their way to get divorced. These various timelines are woven together so snugly that occasionally we enter a location with the Mark and Joanna of a later timeline, and exit with the Mark and Joanna of an earlier timeline, or vice versa.

We follow them through the ups and downs of their relationship, as they fall in love, and out of love, and back in love, as they both have affairs, and as they have the same arguments over and over again. We can see from the beginning that they'll have problems. For example, she wants to get married, he doesn't. Later, when they are married, she wants to have children, but he doesn't. “We agreed before we were married that we weren’t going to have children,” he reminds her. “And before we were married we didn’t.” The chemistry between Hepburn and Finney is easy, not forced. When they flirt, we believe that they want each other, and when they fight we believe that they're angry... but at the same time would like nothing better than to forgive each other and forget. For a brief time she leaves him for another man and when she returns they have a conversation that is short and simple, but manages to convey the various emotions at play for both of them. “You humiliated me. You humiliate me… and then you come back,” he says. She nods, saying, “That’s right.” “Thank God!” In this one scene we get a picture of their relationship in miniature, of the ways they play off and against each other, the ways they’ve hurt each other, and the ways that they still need each other.

The direction by Stanley Donen, who is more widely regarded for his work in musicals (Singin’ In The Rain, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers and Damn Yankees among them), is superb. There is drama and comedy, neither of which seems out-of-place, so perfectly mixed are they. The third and forth timelines, during which the marriage is falling apart and ending, is heavy with drama for obvious reasons. The first and second are charming and funny, the trip with the other couple, especially. At one point the couple's daughter throws a tantrum which leaves them stranded by the side of the road. "Do you still want to have children?" Mark asks. "Not that one," Joanna replies.

Donen has said that at the time of its release a lot of people didn’t “get” Two For The Road due to its non-linear, back-and-forth timeline. Today the tricks he used have been employed in so many other films that we're familiar with them and this type of narrative is as much a part of film language as any other. The style of the film doesn’t detract in any way from the story, it only enhances it and contributes to the way that the film still seems fresh and charming, rather than dated. Each timeline is used to mirror the others in some way, so that we anticipate in the early timelines the issues that will have emerged later, and see in the later timelines the things that are still keeping the relationship together, and those things causing cracks to emerge in the foundation. What we end up with is a three-dimensional picture of this relationship and the people in it. Neither one is perfect, but that's what makes them so compelling and what makes their story so emotionally engaging.

There's a running joke throughout the film: he can never find his passport, and she always knows exactly where it is. The film ends with them stopped at the border – a significant fact given that they're on their way to getting divorced and neither one seems totally resigned to going through with it. He's looking frantically for his passport. She holds it up for him and waits for him to notice. When he finally does he takes it from her and says, "Bitch." "Bastard," she replies, both uttering their epithets with affection rather than malice. These final moments more or less sum up their relationship: they’re pulled together and pushed apart in equal turns but, ultimately, they’d be lost without each other.