It would have been fairly accurate if someone had called me culturally illiterate since I hadn’t watched My Fair Lady- the delightfully witty and beautifully rendered classic that I am currently watching.
What I find most captivating about the movie is how marvellously it has brought out the elegant, exquisite beauty of the English language. Henry Higgins, with all his misogyny in everything he utters, is an absolute joy to listen to. The actor who plays Eliza’s father is no less of a genius with words and ‘rhetoric’ , as Higgins gleefully finds out. Higgins found him ‘irresistable’.
The one flaw in the movie is the casting of Eliza. Audrey Hepburn is too exquisite, too classical a beauty that it is hard to believe that she could be a ‘commoner’ with a cockney accent.
But we can easily overlook that flaw. The film is that gorgeous.
Cambridge GCE O' level English language examinations 