| I’m just chiming in. As good as Hepburn is in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S and SABRINA and ROMAN HOLIDAY, as women who masterfully cope by distancing themselves from difficult circumstances, so does she fail to find Eliza’s embrace of reality, her grit. Eliza is a tigress: fearless, begging to be challenged. Wendy Hiller has it, in the non-musical film. Julie Andrews has it in the tv-clips. Maybe Hapburn would’ve been fine opposite Cary Grant or Fred Astaire as Higgins. But she can’t match Harrison’s deep certainty, so we worry about her (as we did, tremendously, for Lauren Ambrose at Lincoln Center). I think if you worry about Eliza, the balance between the two is off, and the story suffers. My opinion. |
