My Fair Lady has the worst last line ever. Of any movie. Bar none. "Where the devil are my slippers?" Seriously!? That's all 'Enry 'Iggins has to say to Eliza? And she's seriously gonna stand there and not retort? She's willing to throw all her hard-earned self-respect down the drain without any kind of explanation or apology from him?
I have never read Pygmalion. Thanks to my friend Google, however, I have just skimmed the ending, and found this:
This being the state of human affairs, what is Eliza fairly sure to do when she is placed between Freddy and Higgins? Will she look forward to a lifetime of fetching Higgins's slippers or to a lifetime of Freddy fetching hers? There can be no doubt about the answer. Unless Freddy is biologically repulsive to her, and Higgins biologically attractive to a degree that overwhelms all her other instincts, she will, if she marries either of them, marry Freddy.
And that is just what Eliza did.
So THERE, Hollywood! George Bernard Shaw got it. But you thought it would be more romantic if she ended up with Higgins. Well, THANK YOU VERY MUCH for RUINING the ENTIRE movie. Hmph.
My husband thinks that I take this a little too seriously. In my personal belief system, however, it is not possible to take a musical too seriously.
Up next, the dream sequence in Oklahoma! How awful is that!?
2 comments:
You want to know what always bothered me? In "The Sound of Music," after Julie Andrews gets married to Christopher Plummer, and she sings the reprise of "16 going on 17" and she says that "lo and behold you're someone's wife, and you belong to him."
Belong? What is she, nuts? To a man with a dog whistle?
Grrrr. And yet I keep watching it, just for the scene where they dance together on the patio.
Good one!
I've also always wondered what Maria could've possibly done in her "wicked, miserable past" that was so awful. She was training to be a NUN. Cripes.
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