Pygmalion

"He treats a flowergirl as if she were a dutchess"
"I treat a dutchess as if she were a flowergirl"

Pygmalion should be a familiar story to even the most modern viewer, it's such a comically iconic story with such a big influence on pop culture. The story echoes in remakes like My Fair Lady and She's All That, or in dozens of television shows, and whilst playwright Bernard Shaw crafted this reinterpretation of the ancient Pygmalion myth as a deconstruction of England's class system, it still retains relevance in regards to gender politics and social preconceptions. It's also razorsharp, very funny in quite a cutting way. It's a product of its time, but it's so barbed and densely concise in what it says that it still feels fresh and valid all these years later.

"Middle class morality claims its victim"

Professor Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard) is a phonetics boffin who accepts a challenge to coach cockney waif Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller), hoping to show that class is learned rather than bred. He elevates Eliza to the status of a lady but once he proves that he can do it he then casts her aside to return to the gutter. Unfortunately, by this point Eliza has become devastatingly aware of the difference between their classes. She learns self respect and is unable to ever return to what she was. Meanwhile, Higgins only learns to appreciate her once she's found independence, but by then it's too late.

It's a tale loaded with layers of irony... Higgins can't love Eliza until after he's changed her superficial airs, such is own inherent class snobbery. But the change he affects on her also means that she gains a self-awareness that allows her to see right through Higgins' and his tragic shallowness.

"She's so deliciously low, so horribly dirty"

Higgins starts out as a very unsympathetic character. He's arrogant and condescending, and even with Leslie Howard's matinee idol looks he comes across as downright cruel and cynically shameless. In stark contrast, Eliza Doolittle is initially duplicitous, dirty and noisy. That's dirty as in... she has literally never had a wash! She's as outwardly unappealing as Higgins is inwardly ugly. At first, she doesn't care that Higgins is using her, but this is purely because she doesn't know any better. He'll teach her manners, she'll teach him to be human, and then they'll both come to terms with the horror of what they've done only after they've done it, and therein lies the biggest irony of all.

But hey, it's not all doom, gloom and character assassination - it's actually quite a funny film. Eliza's introduction into 'polite' society is one of the classic car crash scenes of awkward comedy in cinema history. Hiller really plays it to the hilt, with little regard for her own vanity as an actress, and she makes Eliza's transition to ladyhood entirely believable. She was definitely deserving of her Oscar nomination.

Overall Pygmalion starts out quite light and pleasant, but then it shifts into some fiercely intellectual territory. It helps that it has a strong basis in the Bernard Shaw's equally famous play. I mean, the idea that one's command of language could be a social barrier isn't the sort of thing that usually gets explored in film, but Pygmalion translates this idea (and some other high-minded concepts) to the screen in such an entertaining manner, with real wit and sincerity. The directors also know how to break free of the story's roots in the theatre, using off-kilter camera angles to suggest stress and pulling the camera right out for the big ballroom scenes, giving the film some physical energy to match the more psychological aspects.

DIRECTOR: Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard

WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Bernard Shaw, W. P. Liscomb, Ian Dalrymple and Cecil Lewis, based on the play by Bernard Shaw.
KEY ACTORS: Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller, Wilfrid Lawson, Leueen MacGrath, Scott Sunderland

RELATED TEXTS
- Based on the 1912 play Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw, which in turn was based on the Pygmalion myth.
- The Pygmalion myth also inspired the 19th century productions Pygmalion and Galatea, and Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed.
- Shaw's play was re-adapted for the theatre as a musical called My Fair Lady, which was also made into the film My Fair Lady.
- A more modern re-interpretation was the American teen comedy She's All That.
- Other films influenced by the story: Educating Rita, Hoi Poloi (starring the Three Stooges), The First Night of Pygmalion and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.

AWARDS

Academy Awards - won Best Screenplay. Also nominated for Best Film, Best Actress (Wendy Hiller) and Best Actor (Leslie Howard).
Venice Film Festival - won the Volpi Cup. Also nominated for the Mussolini Cup.