Pygmalion (1939)

A Masterpiece!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

. . . that "Eliza Doolittle" is driven back to Leslie Howard's self-styled modern Pygmalion, Professor of Phonetics Henry Higgins. This despite the fact that the future "Ashley Wilkes" (Leslie Howard) uses the "D-word" a dozen times more than Clark Gable's Rhett Butler would the following year in GONE WITH THE WIND. (That's because England was about a dozen times more "free" than America back in the 1900s.) Eliza's wavering between misogynist "confirmed bachelor" Henry and Freddy's Mr. Giggles is understandable, since Oscar-winning screenwriter George Bernard Shaw included an "afterword" about 50 pages long with the book version of his original PYGMALION stage play explaining why he thought Freddy--NOT Henry--must wind up with the flapper version of Galatea, Eliza. Emerson said a foolish consistency is the "hobgoblin" of little minds, which excuses Shaw's ambivalence. Bernie had a great big brain--so vast that he's the only screenwriter in movie history to have a Nobel Prize on his mantle. When you watch PYGMALION, you'll realize Shaw handed Lerner and Lowe the musical openings and half the actual lyrics to their eventual 1964 "Best Picture" screen musical remake of this story: MY FAIR LADY.

This is my first review and I will try to make it short. This movie is based on Shaws play "Pygmalion". Its basically an adaption of an old Greek myth. You can read more about it by just searching for Pygmalion on Google (I do not want to somewhat spoiler). Its not like all the comedy nowadays. You do not sit there and laugh at big jokes. This movie rather makes you smile continuous. You have to look at the movie as a whole and not at the single little jokes. The acting is brilliant. Both Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller do a great job and they really get into their roles. If you like comedy with a little more content, you should try to watch "Pygmalion".

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.

Linguistically appropriate and bad-mannered Leslie Howard (as Henry Higgins) bets he can teach cockney guttersnipe Wendy Hiller (as Eliza Doolittle) how to speak in high society, and then pass her off to the Buckingham Palace crowd as a Duchess. This production of George Bernard Shaw's classic story doesn't have the great Lerner / Loewe songs made familiar in the musical ("My Fair Lady") version, but it's a much better production, overall. Mr. Shaw receives official credit; he shared an "Academy Award" win with three screenplay adapters. Whatever the distribution of work, Shaw's sharp and brilliant satire on British dialects shines prominently. Everyone performs marvelously. The accent is on excellence.********** Pygmalion (8/38) Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard ~ Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller, Wilfrid Lawson, Scott Sunderland