Bijin-chan!

The other movie I watched Friday was much older; it was My Fair Lady.  Audrey Hepburn has long been a favorite of mine, so it was fairly odd that I hadn't yet seen her most famous piece.

I knew the overall outline of the plot, but had no idea of the specifics (in fact, I didn't even know it was a musical, somehow).  Adding in the specifics was definitely up my alley, though.  Very late 19th or early 20th century London, with an emphasis on accents and such.  I'm a big fan of linguistics (though never had any interest in computational linguistics, for some reason.  I rather regret that, actually), so having philologists as two of the three main characters was quite amusing.

The movie opened quite unusually, with an overture and a montage of close-up shots of flowers.  It quickly moves into introducing the setting and principles, with a memorable run-in with Hepburn's Eliza Doolittle and Harrison's Henry Higgins.  At the end of this, Higgins brags to a colleague (just met, though they were familiar with each other's work) that he could turn this uneducated street merchant (with some memorable imprecations towards her diction and word selection) into someone who could pass for a duchess.

The rest of it is, in broad strokes, at least, pretty predictable, but very well done.  The leads were both excellent (I wasn't aware she was that good a singer), as were the scenery and costumes (the costumer had a field day with two of the scenes), and the supporting roles were also well done.

Basically, I loved the whole movie even though, at the end, I found myself unsure why Higgins and Doolittle were interested in each other.  Certainly, he was rich, smart, and witty.  Certainly, she was very pretty and a quick learner.  But I still felt like "I could have danced all night" came out of nowhere (especially with as much of a jackass as Higgins was to her, both before and after that), and never really saw any sign of his attraction to her until the very end (and that was pretty limited).  The latter, now that I think on it some more, was likely a weakness of Harrison's performance (the only one I can think of).

And, now that I think on it, the whole movie could have been shortened a bit.  At the very least, Eliza's father's piece about waking him in the morning really felt extraneous.  It was well done, it just did nothing to advance the main storyline.  In fact, the character probably could have been excised entirely.  He was pretty funny, but again, just distracted from the main story.

Despite all that, I'll certainly watch it again.  It might be a while, as my queue is absurdly long, but I'll definitely keep it in mind.  I really wish Hollywood would still make musicals along these lines.  And I really need to dig up a copy of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.

Taking a Holiday

Just watched the old classic, Roman Holiday, a few days ago.

I'd been curious about that one for a while, and finally bought it a couple of month or two ago, and watched it a week or so back. It was a very funny movie, well put together. Audrey Hepburn was amazing. Gregory Peck was quite good as well, although I do wish Cary Grant hadn't turned it down. Two screen presences like Hepburn and Grant together would have been quite the match.

Of course, it could have been the match that burned down the whole movie, who knows? But boy, it would have been interesting.

Getting back to the movie, though, it was neat watching them move through Rome (sometimes ironically, sometimes sentimentally). It's such a beautiful city, and I love that one of my favorite spots in the city (Castel Sant'Angelo) was featured fairly prominently.

But it really brought back my two trips to Italy, as I'd seen most of the spots they stopped (including when they stopped at a cafe next to The Pantheon, though they never showed the whole building). The only major landmark I didn't recognize, I think, was the wishing wall; I hadn't even heard of that one. I'll have to look for it if I make it back over there.

I was a little disappointed that the only appearance of the Vatican was an outside shot of St Peter's Square, although I suppose that isn't someplace you'd go when searching for a bit of excitement. But the art collection inside is certainly hard to match.

In any event, I enjoyed the movie a great deal. The whole thing felt a little contrived, but not so much as to ruin the movie. The setup with her at the embassy gathering the night before was very well done, with her losing her shoe, and the Ambassador smoothly helping her recover it was fantastic.

And the ending, with her walking into her duties with full knowledge of what she was doing was very well done. She had obviously grown up, and it was impressive and sad to see.

The ending definitely wasn't what I was expecting, but they really hadn't built any hints of anything more than that. I just expected something more of the typical Hollywood ending, and that definitely wasn't it.

I was awfully surprised also, when they said in one of the bonus features, that the reason for filming in black and white was to keep Rome itself from overpowering the actors. It did make sense, though; those were some awfully powerful backgrounds as it was. They might well have been overwhelming in color. Nevertheless, it seems a shame.

Rome isn't my favorite city, but it's close, and one of the most beautiful.