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"PYGMALION" (1938): BRITISH CINEMA AT ITS BEST:

Posted by DEWEY MEE on Oct 12th 2024

The 1938 film version of "Pygmalion", George Bernard Shaw's astringent satire of the British social class system, represents British cinema at its very best.
Pompous Professor Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard) bets his more gracious colleague Col. Pickering (Scott Sunderland) that he can transform Eliza Doolittle, (Wendy Hiller) a spirited and sassy Cockney flower girl from the London slums, into a "society lady" in a mere six months.
He gets more than he bargained for when Eliza arrives at his apartment the next morning; taking him up on his offer to teach her "proper diction" so she can become "a lady in a flower shop." Higgins, who perceives Eliza as "so deliciously low, so horrible dirty," can't resist the challenge.
Higgins' mother (Marie Lohr) is appalled by the situation, chastising Higgins and Pickering for being "a pair of pretty babies playing with your live doll."
Higgins, the personification of a snobby, "upper-class" twit, definitely has a thing or two to learn about humanity from his "lower-class" student. Higgins is shocked to discover that Eliza always had a heart, soul, and mind of her own.
Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller are perfectly matched in this "comedy of manners", and Wilfred Lawson shines in the supporting role of Eliza's jovial but drunken father Alfred Doolittle. Esme Percy is equally memorable as Arisid Karpathy, a former student of Higgins who confronts him at a society ball and proclaims that Eliza is a "Hungarian Princess, of Royal blood."
If the prickly relationship between Higgins and Eliza remains unsatisfying at best, it is because Shaw, like Higgins, didn't have any idea how to have an adult, human relationship.
Alan Jay Lerner and Frederich Loewe, of course, used the Academy Award winning screenplay as the basis for the musical "My Fair Lady", which retains much of Shaw's sharp and snappy dialogue, and elevates the material with such songs as "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?", "A Little Bit Of Luck", "Get Me To The Church On Time", "I Could Have Danced All Night", and "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face."
Producer Jack Warner's 1964 film version, sluggishly directed by George Cukor, never elevated "My Fair Lady" to the heights it deserved, however. Rex Harrison is allowed to be cold and calculated, while Audrey Hepburn strives to do the best she can under very stressful circumstances. In the end, Harrison and Hepburn pail in comparison to Howard and Hiller's superb and inspired performances here. "My Fair Lady" comes off as an overproduced by-product of the Warner Brothers "back-lot." This far superior "Pygmalion" has more wit and grit, and feels altogether more authentic.