My Fair Lady |  | Actors: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison
Studio: Paramount
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $11.57
as of 11/25/2009 01:50 CST details
You Save: $8.42 (42%)
New (35) Used (2) from $11.57
Seller: digitaleyes_dvdplanet
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 657
Format: Color, DVD, Original recording remastered, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: G (General Audience)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 172 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.7
MPN: 871964
UPC: 097368719644
EAN: 0097368719644
ASIN: B002HK9IDQ
Theatrical Release Date: 1964
Release Date: October 6, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 10/06/2009 Run time: 170 minutes Rating: G
|
| Customer Reviews:
MY FAIR LADY November 21, 2009
R. Kendrick (Georgia, USA)
This was my late husband's very favorite movie. My video of
My Fair Lady was lost, and I was so glad to find it now on DVD.
It provides many hours of entertainment and enjoyment.
Musical In Grand Old Style-Lerner&Loewe September 26, 2009
carol irvin (United States)
3 out of 10 found this review helpful
At the time of this movie's release, directed by the Oscar winning George Cukor, there were a lot of bitter feelings because Audrey Hepburn got Julie Andrews's role for the film. This could only be done because in film you can have someone else dub the singing. The star does not really need to be a singer. Marni Nixon did this for both Audrey Hepburn in this film and Natalie Wood in WEST SIDE STORY. Decades later, it is obvious that the non-singing Hepburn was perfect in the role of Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl transformed into a lady by Henry Higgins (an Oscar winning Rex Harrison). Andrews never achieved Hepburn's stature as an actress although she was an incredible singer-actress. Hepburn was the best choice. There was no contention over the rest of the cast.
Higgins and Colonel Pickering have a bet over Henry's ability to transform Eliza from a Cockney flower girl to an English lady is the base of the musical. Henry will accomplish this by changing the way she speaks. They will change her wardrobe too, of course, but Henry sees that as something any idiot could do in a few days. Although, the costumes in this film are sublime. Both Henry and Freddie Hill fall in love with Eliza as her language improves. Both want to marry her. That is the plot of the musical in a nutshell.
However, an irony to this musical is that it is wholly based on stinging Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw's PYGMALION. Shaw did not write a romance. He had no intention of having Henry Higgins fall in love with Eliza. He viewed the English with their class distinctions, with the upper classes having ultra posh voices, with scorn and disdain. His was a class study and a scathing one at that. Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Loewe dusted off Shaw's play. They set it to musical numbers and changed the ending so that yes, this was a happy ever romance between Henry and Eliza. Voila, one of the best loved musicals of the twentieth century emerged. Probably a miniscule percentage of people have ever seen PYGMALION compared to MY FAIR LADY. Of further irony, when the non-musical movie of PYGMALION was made, with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller, the ending was changed for the movie too so that Henry and Eliza ended up together. If you want to see Shaw's work as written, you either have to read the play or see it on stage. It seems that relatively few do.
On the street where you live September 5, 2009
bernie (Arlington, Texas)
Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) who specializes in the English language makes a bet with Colonel Hugh Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White) that he can take someone who speaks with a lower-class language and by correcting the speech can pass off as upper-class or royalty. Overhearing this bet is a flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn); she wants to work a flower stand. But they will not take her unless she can speak more "genteel". Professor Higgins takes up the challenge.
Will he succeed?
What does her father (Stanley Holloway) thing finding that she moved in whit the two professors and did not want any clothes?
This is a musical version of the movie Pygmalion (1938), based on a play by George Bernard Shaw.
As people find that music and movies bring memories of the time in which they heard or viewed it. His movie has a meaning to me as I too was in love and found my self singing "On the street where you live." One of the strengths of the movie is that many of the songs instead of being classical and just stuffed into at odd times actually are songs that you would initiate in your life and they did so in the lives of the characters in the movie.
I am sure that technology, as Blu-ray will try to improve on this film. In addition, I suspect there will be other DVD extras. Yet no matter which product you buy, you will be satisfied with this film.
Pygmalion - Criterion Collection ~ Wendy Hiller
loverly new "Fair Lady" release August 25, 2009
Byron Kolln (the corner where Broadway meets Hollywood)
9 out of 14 found this review helpful
This is Paramount's first chance to release MY FAIR LADY on DVD; following a lapse in the distribution/copyright formerly controlled by Warner Brothers. No doubt they'll later include it in an Audrey Hepburn box-set with their other Hepburn titles ("Roman Holiday", "Funny Face" and "Sabrina" among them).
MY FAIR LADY is a true cinema classic; one of the last major Hollywood musicals and the film which finally netted director George Cukor a belated Academy Award for 'Best Director'. Based on the long-running Broadway musical and G.B. Shaw's "Pygmalion", the story follows the grooming of Cockney flower-seller Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) into a lady of refinement by linguistics professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison). These two opposites could hardly be more different, until the day that Higgins admits he's "grown accustomed to her face"...
With a star-studded supporting cast (Wilfred Hyde-White, Jeremy Brett, Gladys Cooper and Stanley Holloway chief among them) and the soaring score of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, MY FAIR LADY is the glittering jewel which capped off the era of the great Hollywood musicals. Seldom again would audiences be treated to such a sumptuous spectacle on the screen.
Despite a huge critical backlash (concerning Julie Andrews not cementing her most acclaimed stage role on film), Audrey Hepburn gives a spirited performance as feisty Eliza. She worked hard to get her limited singing voice into the necessary shape to meet the demands of the score, yet at the 11th hour was replaced by noted Hollywood "ghost singer" Marni Nixon. Rex Harrison, having starred in both the Broadway and London productions of the show, was confident enough in his performance to sing his songs live (via a hidden microphone). Stanley Holloway--another veteran of the stage show--also triumphantly reprises his role for the screen.
Warner's previous double-disc Special Edition release (using the 1997 restored print of the film) was quite definitive. I can't imagine how Paramount is going to top that release--unless they perform a new remaster of the 1997 print. Still, MY FAIR LADY is one of those movies which deserves to always be in circulation, constantly enjoyed and discovered by new audiences. I can only hope a shiny new Blu-ray release is just around the corner...
EXTRA FEATURES:
* Audio commentary with restoration experts Robert Harris and James Katz, art director Gene Allen, and singer Marni Nixon
* Vintage featurettes, footage and audio
* Alternate Audrey Hepburn vocals
* poster and lobby card galleries (with Rex Harrison radio interview)
* "Comments On A Lady"
* trailers
|
|
|
|
