My Fair Lady (1964)

4/5

My Fair Lady is a delightful movie in every sense of the word. Based on the stage play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, the plot follows a poor Cockney flower girl named Eliza Doolittle (Hepburn) and an arrogant phonetics professor named Henry Higgins (Harrison) who decides to take her in and train her to speak "proper English" on a bet from his friend Colonel Pickering (Hyde-White). He believes in his own abilities so much that he is convinced he can turn her into an elegant duchess in just 6 months. Despite their class distinctions, it is immediately apparent that he is a jerk and she is a lady. After they make some progress, he takes her to a horse race to test her out on some upper-crust aristocrats. There she meets the young, handsome Freddy (Brett).

The filmmaking is terrific. The cinematography, costuming, and set design are all beautiful. I loved the theatricality of the extras pausing in place in order to set up several scenes, adding layers of complexity and mood that would otherwise be missing. The acting is a wonder to behold as well. Harrison makes an ass somehow likable and Hepburn proves to be as sweet, charming, and lovely as ever. The songs are surprisingly catchy (I still have I Could Have Danced All Night stuck in my head) and memorable. However, there were some parts I disliked about the movie as well. I hated every single scene and song with Eliza's father (Holloway). He added nothing to the piece and his character should have been removed from the film entirely. His absence would have made the 3 hour film 20 minutes shorter and 0.9 stars better. A shame, because I really really liked this film. If you like musicals and classic romances, I think you'll love this movie.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058385/

Topkapi (1964)

3/5

Jules Dassin's comedy caper Topkapi has as many problems as it does successes. It was enjoyable enough half the time, but frustratingly inadequate the other half. There is an impressive symmetry to the film; it seems that for every positive there is an equal and opposite negative to counterbalance it. If the concept weren't so illogical, I'd say the director had planned it.

The best part of this movie, as with any Dassin film, is its ending. There is not a single misstep in the 20-minute heist sequence; the audience feels the anxiety and tension the characters are experiencing and cannot look away. Coincidentally, the worst part of this movie is its beginning. The film starts with a 10-minute hallucinatory "explanation" of the protagonist's motivation in an unintelligible foreign accent. It must have turned away untold multitudes of previously interested filmgoers. While the dialogue and characters were amusing, the accents and music were annoying. The promising build-up to the climax was disrupted by a bizarre and wholly unnecessary homoerotic oiled wrestling orgy. (It is so difficult to grab onto a shirtless oiled wrestler, it seems, that most end up shoving their hands down the other contestants' pants just to be able to grip onto something.) Still, most of the negatives are unintentionally humorous in their own way and can be used as excuses to further enjoy the movie; so if you're interested in heist movies, check this one out.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0058672/

The Soft Skin (1964)

1/5

The Soft Skin is a simple story of a man unfaithful to his wife. It is boring, unoriginal, and tepid. Not only in terms of the plot, but also the cinematography, editing, music, dialogue, acting, and directing. Some of the work is just plain shoddy and amateurish. The rest can best be described as salvageable. Save for one sensual scene and a finale that deceives you into thinking it is heart-pounding due to the trite events that preceded it, there is no reason anyone needs to watch this.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0058458/