My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964)

Pros:

1. Those gorgeous, eternal songs and the fecund musical universe it engendered. Read Tim J. Anderson's two chapters about the myriad recordings of the numbers and how they trained America in a new form aesthetic discernment in his terrific Making Easy Listening: Material Culture and Postwar American Recording (University of Minnesota Press, 2006). For one such spirited-and-then-some version, check out Lypsinka's take on Marilyn Maye's take on "Get Me to the Church on Time" here.  

2. The sick, gay-ass costumes and art direction of Cecil Beaton. I want never to leave the "Ascot Gavotte."

Cons:

1. The godawful, received, arbitrary, compulsorily heterosexual ending which George Bernard Shaw would've hated.

2. The length. Gawd, post-1960 Hollywood cinema makes my ass itch!

3. The direction. Cukor pulls off some elegant swirls. And I appreciate the perversity of rendering this a de facto inscription of the Broadway show. But lawd, is the camera heavy in that tumescent, Oscar-pandering, post-1960s Hollywood way! Cut! Track! Show me one (1!) fourth wall!

4. Audrey Hepburn. To state the obvious, she acquits herself admirably but Julie Andrews would've smoked her. 

Grade: B