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My Fair Lady (digitally THX mastered)
: essential video:Hollywood's legendary 'woman's director,' George Cukor (The Women, The Philadelphia Story), transformed Audrey Hepburn into street-urchin-turned-proper-lady Eliza Doolittle in this film version of the Lerner and Loewe musical. Based on George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, My Fair Lady stars Rex Harrison as linguist Henry Higgins (Harrison also played the role, opposite Julie Andrews, on stage), who draws Eliza into a social experiment that works almost too well. The letterbox edition of this film on video certainly pays tribute to the pageantry of Cukor's set, but it also underscores a certain visual ...
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Roman Holiday (1953)
: essential video:Maybe it doesn't quite live up to its sterling reputation, and maybe the leading man and director were slightly miscast. But who cares? Roman Holiday is the film that brought Audrey Hepburn to prominence, and the world movie audience went weak at the knees. The endlessly charming Hepburn had her first starring role in this sweet romance, playing a European princess on an official tour through Rome. Frustrated by her lack of connection to the real world, she slips away from her protective handlers and goes on a spree, aided by ...
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Love in the Afternoon
: :Fairy-tale Paris doesn't get more enchanting than Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon, an ode to picnics on the grass and champagne at the Ritz. Audrey Hepburn (who had already made Sabrina with Wilder) is at her best as the inexperienced cellist with a fascination for millionaire American playboy Gary Cooper. Maurice Chevalier (who else?) is Hepburn's father, a private detective with ample evidence of Cooper's crowded history of l'amour. Alongside the sheen of the romance is Wilder's unerring sense of craftsmanship; watch how inanimate objects such as a liquor tray, a white ...
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Funny Face (1957)
: essential video:Fred Astaire plays a fashion photographer based on real-life cameraman Richard Avedon, in this entertaining musical directed by Stanley Donen (Singin' in the Rain). The story finds Astaire's character turning Audrey Hepburn into a chic Paris model--not a tough premise to buy, especially within this film's air of enchantment and surrounded by a great Gershwin score. Based on an unproduced play, this is one of the best films from the latter part of Astaire's career. --Tom Keogh
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Breakfast at Tiffany's
: essential video:No film better utilizes Audrey Hepburn's flighty charm and svelte beauty than this romantic adaptation of Truman Capote's novella. Hepburn's urban sophisticate Holly Golightly, an enchanting neurotic living off the gifts of gentlemen, is a bewitching figure in designer dresses and costume jewelry. George Peppard is her upstairs neighbor, a struggling writer and 'kept' man financed by a steely older woman (Patricia Neal). His growing friendship with the lonely Holly soon turns to love and threatens the delicate balance of both of their compromised lives. Taking liberties with Capote's bittersweet story, ...
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How to Steal a Million
: essential video:Audrey Hepburn was never more sleek and glamorous than in this delightful romantic caper costarring Peter O'Toole and directed by William Wyler. She's the chic daughter of a renowned art collector and covert forger (the always eccentric Hugh Griffith) who's deposited his best work, a famous statue, in a Paris museum. Trouble is, technology can now detect such forgery, so Hepburn plots to steal the statue with the help of O'Toole, an amateur thief and covert inspector. Of course, neither of them knows the whole truth about the other. They make ...
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Robin & Marian
: essential video:This underrated Richard Lester film is really a classic--and one of the most romantic movies ever made. Working from James Goldman's script, Lester casts Sean Connery as an aged Robin Hood, returned after years away at the Crusades with an increasingly mad King Richard (Richard Harris). Robin and Little John (a very funny Nicol Williamson) return to find that the sheriff of Nottingham (Robert Shaw) is up to his old nasty tricks--and that Maid Marian (Audrey Hepburn) is now a nun. Lester brings the same touch to this period film that ...
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Green Mansions
: essential video:This underrated Richard Lester film is really a classic--and one of the most romantic movies ever made. Working from James Goldman's script, Lester casts Sean Connery as an aged Robin Hood, returned after years away at the Crusades with an increasingly mad King Richard (Richard Harris). Robin and Little John (a very funny Nicol Williamson) return to find that the sheriff of Nottingham (Robert Shaw) is up to his old nasty tricks--and that Maid Marian (Audrey Hepburn) is now a nun. Lester brings the same touch to this period film that ...
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My Fair Lady
: essential video:Hollywood's legendary 'woman's director,' George Cukor (The Women, The Philadelphia Story), transformed Audrey Hepburn into street-urchin-turned-proper-lady Eliza Doolittle in this film version of the Lerner and Loewe musical. Based on George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, My Fair Lady stars Rex Harrison as linguist Henry Higgins (Harrison also played the role, opposite Julie Andrews, on stage), who draws Eliza into a social experiment that works almost too well. The letterbox edition of this film on video certainly pays tribute to the pageantry of Cukor's set, but it also underscores a certain visual ...
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Wait Until Dark
: essential video:Audrey Hepburn's last Oscar nomination was for this adaptation of Frederick Knott's famed stage thriller about a blind woman, a con man (Alan Arkin), and a doll full of heroin. Thanks to Hepburn's husband, a photographer who does a good deal of traveling, she's unknowingly come into possession of said doll, which was given to him on a plane by a comely young drug runner who winds up dead. The murderous Arkin, aided by sympathetic henchman Richard Crenna, will let nothing stand in the way of his obtaining it, even if ...
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