My Fair Lady

I'm watching My Fair Lady on TCM, and the scene where Eliza sweeps down the stairs in that unbelievably wonderful white ballgown has just come on. Every time I see it, some innately female part of my heart just sighs with envy. God, I wish I could look like that once in my life. I guess probably every woman who's ever seen this movie has had that thought. Audrey Hepburn is always so lovely and chic, but to me, that moment, that dress, is the ultimate princess fantasy. Of course, what follows not long after isn't very princessy....

I have very mixed feelings about MFL. I always have. I love old movies, and I really enjoy some of the older musicals, even though they are full of cheese, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers being a prime example of this. In MFL, though, I have to say that I absolutely loathe Higgins. I know you're supposed to dislike him or at least find his exterior gruff, but I find the ending, Eliza's return to him, totally unwarranted. After all, she's the one who has changed herself. She's the one who has been declared worthy of being a Hungarian princess. Why does the woman who is capable of walking down those stairs in such radiant loveliness that generations of little girls and grown women wish to be her wind up shackled to a man who makes his own mother shudder in public situations?

I know love is blind, but the story has always been so one-sided to me. It ends with Rex Harrison sitting in the big leather armchair asking for his slippers and Hepburn standing in the doorway staring in adoringly. Yes, he's been caught listening to her voice on the cylinder, for him an admission of emotion, but honestly, after everything else, is that really enough? After his repeated verbal cruelty, has anything he's done balanced that out? I've never thought the movie adequately showed that he redeemed himself enough to deserve her or even make her feelings for him credible. When was he ever kind to her except for actually taking her in off the streets?

I know, I know, it's only a movie. Let it go. Focus on the lovely dress and the songs that get stuck in the mind for days. (Even now, I am mentally humming "I could have daaanced all niiight....") But I have to say that as I'm adding DVDs to my collection, I pass up MFL again and again and will continue to do so. Something about my twenty-first century sensibilities can't quite let the dress and sparklies blind me to the jackass in the tweed standing in the wings.