miss_lady_ice-853-608700 The first time I watched this film, it just felt like My Fair Lady without songs. Of course, that's a backward view seeing as My Fair Lady was an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's original play, but My Fair Lady has become such a classic that it's hard not to hear Eliza say "the rain in Spain" and not go into singing it. However, upon re-watching it, I found it to be delightful and a perfect companion for My Fair Lady.Leslie Howard is perfect as Professor Henry Higgins, the teacher of phonetics who makes a bet with friend Colonel Pickering (Scott Sunderland) that he can take a flower girl and turn her into a duchess. That flower girl is Eliza Dolittle (Wendy Hiller). Initially I found Hiller's performance to be less charming than Audrey Hepburn's, but Hiller's performance is charming. It is the charm of comedy and wit rather than Hepburn's mix of vulnerability and assurance. This is not an inferior charm, simply a different one.I adore Leslie Howard as Henry Higgins. In the play, Higgins is only 41, so comparatively young. However in My Fair Lady, 58-year-old Rex Harrison played Higgins, and the actors that followed tended to be in their late forties-late fifties. It's interesting to see both versions. The older Higgins of My Fair Lady means that we do not see their relationship as a typical "love affair" and so we concentrate on Eliza's journey rather than wanting her to get together with Higgins. Having a younger Higgins adds a wonderful sexual frisson and Howard is boyishly sexy in a geeky sort of way without being sexy in a matinée idol sort of way. However, some of the deeper meanings of the play get a little lost this way. This film is a witty cerebral version of the play (I adore David Tree's portrayal of Freddie as a simpering toff), with great editing by David Lean (who would go on to direct Brief Encounter and Laurence of Arabia just for starters). However, My Fair Lady helps to reveal the darker messages behind the play.

James Hitchcock George Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion" was written in support of his controversial thesis that class divisions in British society could be overcome by encouraging the use of Received Pronunciation (supported by reformed spelling in a phonetic alphabet) in place of regional and class accents. Today such an idea would doubtless be attacked as snobbish and reactionary, but in 1912 Shaw clearly intended it to be enlightened and progressive. The story concerns Henry Higgins, an upper-class professor of phonology, who accepts a bet that he can teach a Cockney flower-seller to speak like a duchess and pass her off as one at an Embassy reception. The title was taken from a Greek myth about a sculptor who creates a beautiful statue which the gods transform into a real woman; the implication is that Higgins is the sculptor and Eliza his "creation". (I remember misunderstanding the title when I was taken to a performance as a child and found myself wondering why, in a play called "Pig Malion", pigs were never mentioned once).This film, dating from 1938, was the first cinema adaptation of the play. Although it was a financial and critical success in its day, its fame has today largely been overshadowed by that of the 1964 musical version "My Fair Lady". The screenplay was adapted by Shaw himself from his play, although the ending was changed against his wishes, with Eliza returning to Higgins' home in such a manner as to suggest a romantic attachment between them. The original play ended with Eliza marrying her admirer Freddie Eynsford-Hill, a wealthy but vapid and foolish young man, and Shaw strongly resisted any attempts by actors or theatrical producers to change this ending. In "My Fair Lady" it seems at first as if the audience are being prepared for Shaw's original ending; Freddie is made more attractive, both in looks and in personality, and he gets to sing one of the film's big romantic numbers, "On the Street Where You Live". That film, however, also ends with Eliza returning to Higgins.There was a reason why Shaw resisted attempts to turn "Pygmalion" into a romantic comedy. (He seems to have deliberately ignored the fact that in the original myth Pygmalion fell in love with and married his creation Galatea). Besides social class, the play also deals with the theme of feminism, with Eliza seen as a strong, determined "new woman" who learns to stand up for herself after being bullied first by her drunken, womanising old reprobate of a father and then by Higgins, a crashing snob and misogynist. (He regards Eliza as a "guttersnipe" and has no qualms about calling her one to her face). The attraction of Freddie for her is precisely that he is a weak character and therefore unlikely to bully her.This film updates the action from the 1910s to the 1930s (although some of the costumes look a bit old-fashioned for the latter period) and makes a few other changes to the plot of the play, some of which were retained in "My Fair Lady", such as the invention of the Hungarian Professor Karpathy. Shaw, however, kept his controversial line "Not bloody likely!", making Wendy Hiller the first person to utter that particular profanity in a in a British film; rather surprisingly the censors appear to have raised no objection. One thing the makers of this film got right, unlike the American makers of "My Fair Lady, is the pronunciation of the name "Eynsford", originally a Kentish village. (It's "Ainsford", not "Inesford").Hiller was reputedly Shaw's favourite actress and was certainly something of a specialist in Shavian drama at a time when performances of his works on the London stage were more frequent than they are today; her next film, "Major Barbara", was also a Shaw adaptation. It is therefore unsurprising that she makes a fine Eliza, perhaps closer to Shaw's original conception than Audrey Hepburn who always seems more convincing as the society lady of the later scenes than as the Cockney of the earlier ones. Leslie Howard is certainly a better Higgins than Rex Harrison, who was too old and too laid-back; I have never understood why he won the "Best Actor" Oscar, especially as his singing voice was not really up to taking the male lead in a musical.In his lifetime, Shaw was held in very high esteem as one of the greatest British dramatists of all time, at times regarded almost as a twentieth-century Shakespeare. Since his death his reputation has declined somewhat, although a number of his plays, "Pygmalion" among them, still hold a popular place in the repertoire. He was able to create witty dialogue and interesting characters, even when he was writing a didactic piece, which most of his plays are, and this is particularly true of "Pygmalion". Antony Asquith's film is a worthy adaptation of this distinguished play for the cinema. 8/10

bob-790-196018 This is a four-star movie in the various video guides, but not for me. True, there is much to like. It can be very funny. But two-thirds of the way through the film I began finding the Henry Higgins character unbearably dense--for all his brilliance--and tiresome.Here Eliza Doolittle has been transformed into a veritable princess, but for Higgins this just means he's won his bet with Pickering. He can't see the beauty that's right in front of him. For that matter, throughout the film he cannot see the human woman that's right in front of him; he treats her like an object and is downright mean.Higgins strikes me as the sort of irascible eccentric that we are meant to find delightful and, when all is said and done, endearing. It's been my belief that eccentrics are tiresome because they really have no sense of what they look like to others and in fact don't really care that much about others. They're too busy riding some behavioral or mental hobby horse. And that's what makes them eccentric.Wendy Hiller is wonderful as Eliza, both pre- and post-Higgins. I don't see anything funny about the way Higgins treats her character.I don't know anything about G.B. Shaw other than this film derived from one of his plays. It doesn't make me want to find out more about his work.

pontifikator PygmalionThis is a movie adaptation of the play by George Bernard Shaw; Shaw rewrote the play for the screen and, in my very humble opinion, messed it up. It still is worth watching, though, for people who enjoy intelligence and wit in their movies.We all know the story: 'Enry 'Iggins (ably played by Leslie Howard) picks a flower girl from the gutter (Eliza Doolittle, played admirably by Wendy Hiller), teaches her manners and an upper class dialect, then shows her off in society where she fools everyone. Wendy Hiller was, again in my humble opinion, the best actress of Shaw's time to play his heroines. She was 27 or 28 at the time this movie was made, and she reminds me of Maggie Gyllenhaal in "The Secretary." Hiller really shines as the flower girl with more than spunk.The problem with the movie is that Shaw changed the ending. He also added a dance scene and a character, but they pass without objection. The ending, however, completely changes the play. Shaw had his views, and he was very definite about them. He attacked society and its hypocrisy at every opportunity, and his attacks were more impressive because of their popularity. Among his plays were "Mrs. Warren's Profession" (she was a prostitute, shocking at the time), "Arms and the Man," "Major Barbara," and "Candida." Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.In "Pygmalion," Shaw punctured middle class morality and England's class system. One of the funniest scenes in the movie takes place after Higgins has taught Eliza the niceties of pronunciation but not of conversation. He takes her to his mother's home, where she meets and converses with Higgins's mother and her friends. Shaw places her interests and vocabulary in the gutter (so to speak), but gives her the precise pronunciation of the upper class as she talks about her aunt being fed gin to revive her until someone done her in. The dialogue is excellent, and the cast perfectly shows the blank-faced confusion of the upper class as they maintain their mannered aplomb.The movie is mostly a witty social satire; you can ignore the social satire which is dated and just enjoy the wit and sparks flying between Eliza and Henry. If you pay attention to the dialogue, you'll be rewarded. However, when we get to the end, the dialogue becomes didactic and things tended to drag a little for me, although Hiller's interpretation of Eliza's lines makes them ring with pride and independence: "I won't be coaxed round as if I was a baby or a puppy. If I can't have kindness, I'll have independence." I'm very disappointed by the ending, though. SPOILERS---------------In the play, there is a poor but upper class character named Freddy who worships Eliza. After Henry shows Eliza off at a royal party, Henry takes full credit for having produced a clever parrot from a guttersnipe. Eliza is outraged that her hard work and personal effort, to say nothing of her native intelligence, are unnoticed by Henry. They argue, giving Shaw's view of the world, and Eliza leaves Henry for Freddy. This is the ending as it should be, although it gives lie to the title.* For the movie, Eliza leaves with Freddy but returns to Henry and fetches his slippers. I can't believe Shaw wrote this, but there it is in black and white. It gives the movie what I presume audiences saw as a happy ending. (The final shot reminds me of the end of "The Man Who Fell to Earth," by the way.) It's not enough of a travesty to wreck the whole movie for me, but it was a disappointment nonetheless.*The story of Pygmalion is given in Ovid's "Metamorphoses." In that story, Pygmalion is an artist who lives on an island. None of the women there meet his standards of virtue, and he carves a likeness of his perfect woman in ivory. The statue is so beautiful he falls in love with it and prays to Venus for the statue to live. Venus hears his plea and grants it, giving life to Galatea. They marry and live happily ever after.