It is unnecessary to summarize the plot or list the songs if you are not familiar with both, you are culturally illiterate, although in six months I could pass you off as a critic at Cannes, or even a clerk in a good video store, which requires better taste. So horribly dirty.' If Henry will teach Eliza to improve her speech, she will try to teach him decency and awaken his better nature. Higgins' response will thrum below the action for most of the play: 'You know, it's almost irresistible.

It is her ambition, not Henry's, that sets the plot in motion, including the professor's bet with his fellow linguist Pickering, who says he'll pay for the lessons if Higgins can transform her speech. But they won't take me unless I can talk more genteel.' I could even get her a job as a lady's maid or a shop assistant, which requires better English.' The final twist, typical Shavian paradox, is what Eliza hears, and it supplies her inspiration: 'I want to be a lady in a flower shop instead of sellin' at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. She took seriously his boast the night before, in Covent Garden: 'You see this creature with her curbstone English? The English that will keep her in the gutter till the end of her days? Well, sir, in six months, I could pass her off as a duchess at an Embassy Ball. In fact it is Eliza ( Audrey Hepburn) who takes the initiative, presenting herself at Henry's bachelor quarters to sign up for lessons: 'I know what lessons cost as well as you do, and I'm ready to pay.'Įven in this early scene, it is Eliza's will that drives the plot Higgins might have tinkered forever with his phonetic alphabet and his recording devices if Eliza hadn't insisted on action. It is often mistakenly said that they collaborate because Higgins ( Rex Harrison) decides to improve Eliza's Cockney accent.

The story involves a meeting of two egos, one belonging to the linguist Henry Higgins, the other, no less titanic, to the flower girl Eliza Doolittle.

Gigi 1958 roger ebert