Backstory: Frederick now likes movie musicals. Blame Wall-E, which, as those who've seen it (which should be all of you - it's the best postapocalyptic dystopian science fiction film for kids ever) will know features several snippets from a musical, specifically Hello Dolly (the 1969 version starring Barbra Streisand, Walter Matthau and pre-Frank-Spencer Michael Crawford). Intrigued, I ordered the blu-ray of it and it quickly became one of F's favorite films (it has just occurred to me that it is probably not coincidental that "Dolly" rhymes with "Wall-E"). Casting around for similar experiences, I next ordered Oliver! and (perhaps you saw this coming) My Fair Lady. Let me just say this: musicals are long. They all seem to have actual intermissions built in to the disks (you'd think this wouldn't be necessary when you can pause the thing at any point). Anyway, My Fair Lady. Practically a Christmas Classic in my childhood (that and The Sound of Music - also BLOODY long) and I realized that I hadn't actually seen it since then. I had very fond recollections of it, largely Audrey Hepburn related, and the musical numbers remain toe-tapping (and Jeremy Brett - you know, Sherlock Holmes! - is in it as Freddy, the young suitor), but we decided to watch Pygmalion (the 1938 film version of the Shaw play starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller) after Frederick went to bed and to my surprise it was superior in just about every measure (despite the fact that the dialog of MFL is almost word-for-word the same for the most part). (We had Pygmalion as part of our "50 Years of Janus Films" set that we'll finish working through by about 2050.) The main problem with MFL is that the central relationship between Rex Harrison (excellent) and Audrey Hepburn (woefully miscast, I now realize - still, we'll always have Roman Holiday) just doesn't work. And with the gorgeous young Jeremy Brett right there as an alternative, the idea of Eliza going back to Higgins at the end (after the way he's treated her!) is positively icky. Harrison is wonderful, but he's too old (and a little too brutal) for Eliza. Whereas Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller just seem much more compatible (and the Freddy in Pygmalion is a comically inept Hooray Henry and thus no real alternative). I get Leslie Howard mixed up with Trevor Howard, so I was expecting to see the actor I just watched being terribly brave in Brief Encounter, but this Howard is a much more nimble comic actor, and, while I love Rex Harrison's reading of the lines, he just isn't very likeable, whereas Howard manages to be in spite of himself. And Wendy Hiller, while her cockney accent is almost as bad as Hepburn's (Hepburn was Dutch, Hiller was from Cheshire), is a revelation. She's not what you'd call conventionally attractive, but she's so lively and believable that her Eliza seems so much more real, and her breakdown after the "triumph" of the ball where her performance fools Higgins' Hungarian protege, is accordingly much more affecting. Oh, and while Stanley Holloway is great in MFL, the actor who plays Eliza's father in Pygmalion, is, as his imdb profile says, a scene-stealer indeed (and actually born ten years AFTER Holloway, who was 74 in MFL - was everyone in that film too old?). The ending of Pygmalion is identical to MFL, which is sub-optimal, as it's a betrayal of Eliza (and apparently Shaw hated it), but, as I said, Hiller and Howard have such chemistry that you almost forgive it. (She went on to have a very long career, mostly on the stage, where she was to Shaw what Billie Whitelaw was to Beckett, but he, sadly, was shot down by the Germans in 1943.) So, long story short: if you like the musical, watch Pygmalion anyway and just buy the soundtrack album.
(Minor differences between the two: the "it's my belief they done the old girl in" scene is at Higgins' mother's house in Pygmalion rather than Ascot, so no "move your blooming arse" line, but instead Eliza says "bloody", which (Jami informs me) was the first utterance of said expletive committed to celluloid. Also, instead of Eliza bumping into her father in his wedding finery in Covent Garden, he shows up to Mother Higgins' house and everybody agrees to go to the wedding. Also the opening scene of the film lays things out a bit better than MFL does, and has Higgins meeting Colonel Pickering at the same time he meets Eliza, and it introduces Freddy at the same time so that he doesn't just appear out of nowhere midway through the film as he does in MFL.)
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