英语电影《My Fair Lady》简介:

My Fair Lady
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My Fair Lady is a 1964 musical film adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe stage musical, My Fair Lady, based in turn on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The film was directed by George Cukor and stars Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.

The film won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.

Plot

Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), an arrogant, irascible professor of phonetics, boasts to a new acquaintance, Colonel Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White), that he can teach any woman to speak so "properly" that he could pass her off as a duchess. The person whom he is shown thus teaching is one Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn), a young woman with a strong Cockney accent who is selling flowers on the street. Having overheard Higgins's boast, Eliza finds her way to the professor's house and offers to pay for speech lessons, so that she can work in a flower shop. Pickering is intrigued and wagers that Higgins cannot back up his claim; Higgins takes Eliza on free of charge as a challenge to his skills.

Eliza's father, Alfred P. Doolittle (Stanley Holloway), a dustman, arrives three days later, ostensibly to protect his daughter's virtue, but in reality simply to extract some money from Higgins, and is bought off with £5. Higgins is impressed by the man's genuineness, his natural gift for language, and especially his brazen lack of morals (Doolittle explains, "Can't afford 'em!").


Eliza goes through many forms of speech training, such as speaking with marbles in her mouth and trying to recite the sentence "In Hertford, Hereford, Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen" without dropping the 'h', and to say "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain" rather than "The rine in spine sties minely in the pline". At first, she makes no progress (due to Higgins's harsh approach to teaching), but just as she, Higgins, and Pickering are exhausted and about to give up, Higgins softens his attitude and gives an eloquent speech about the beauty and history behind the English language. Eliza tries one more time and finally "gets it"; she instantly begins to speak with an impeccable upper class accent.

Higgins takes her on her first public appearance to Ascot Racecourse, where she makes a good impression with her stilted, but genteel manners, only to shock everyone by a sudden and vulgar lapse into Cockney: "C'mon Dover, move your bloomin' arse!". Higgins, who dislikes the pretentiousness of the upper class, partly conceals a grin behind his hand, as if to say "I wish I had said that!"

The bet is won when Eliza successfully poses as a mysterious lady of patently noble rank at an embassy ball, despite the unexpected presence of a Hungarian phonetics expert trained by Higgins. Higgins's callous treatment of Eliza afterwards, especially his indifference to her future prospects, leads her to walk out on him, leaving him mystified by her ingratitude. Putting aside his resentment about the intrusion on his life and toward women in general, Higgins finds Eliza the next day and attempts to talk her into coming back to him. During a testy exchange, Higgins's ego gets the better of him, and his former student rejects him.

Higgins makes his way home, stubbornly predicting that Eliza will be ruined without him and come crawling back. However, his bravado collapses and he comes to the horrified realization that he has "grown accustomed to her face". He is reduced to playing an old phonograph recording of her voice lessons. To Higgins's great delight, Eliza chooses that moment to return to him. The last words are from Higgins: "Eliza? ... Where the devil are my slippers?" This differs from the original play's resolution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Fair_Lady_%281964_film%29#Plot


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Love that movie for its beautiful language and the great perform -6grizzly- 给 6grizzly 发送悄悄话 (0 bytes) () 07/25/2008 postreply 13:29:05

I loved it at first time even I did not know what is about. haha -liveinca- 给 liveinca 发送悄悄话 liveinca 的博客首页 (0 bytes) () 07/25/2008 postreply 13:55:20

You must have seen the 1968 version of Oliver! That's another gr -6grizzly- 给 6grizzly 发送悄悄话 (0 bytes) () 07/25/2008 postreply 15:30:09

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