Pygmalion (1939)

Simply Perfect

Powerful

Absolutely Fantastic

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Some aspects old-fashioned especially the wanting to be a "lady." Mother's role unconvincing. But Shaw's play is a classic and this production and acting are first rate.

At first I was doing research and couldn't help but notice that something was familiar about this flick. As the first establishing shot of the town faded in, one building had gigantic pillars and that is when it hit me. MY FAIR LADY. Same story, honestly only different in some ways, but not too much. This one is not a musical, sadly, but on the bright side it is only and hour and a half, as opposed to three hours as its remake was with Audrey "the beautiful" Hepburn in 1964. The title of this film, staring and directed by Leslie Howard, is Pygmalion (1938).Now, Pygmalion is actually a Greek story of an artist who designs a sculpture of a beautiful woman. He ends up falling in love with her and prays to the gods for her to come to life. Aphrodite granted his wish -the lucky bastard.. But this is what the story is based off of.**Henry Higgins's goal is to teach a down-in-the-dumps gutter-girl how to speak the proper English; the fancy kind. To aide him is a colleague named Colonel Pickering, who is a very easy going lad with very little to say.I really found Eliza (Wendy Hiller) a bit different from Hepburn's. I believe in this film, she gave here character more of a meaning. She starts out as a desperate FLOWER girl who just wants to get by, but also aches to learn how to be more middle-class; how to speak properly; and how to fare. This is shown towards the beginning when they negotiate the terms in which Henry (Leslie Howard) teaches her simple phonetics (the science of speech). -- She is also a tad more passive; she seems more accepting to the change rather than completely pushing it away.As for Henry, Rex Harrison's was excellent, but so was Howard's. He defines his character and makes him truly an arrogant bachelor, who does not even notice his insults that come out of his mouth. You can see that he takes after his mother, but only on the egotistic part. She carries a little more heart on her sleeve, if you know what I mean.One thing I would like to mention is that the EDITING, for its time, is amazing! There are two montage scenes that include fading transitions and dutch-angle close-ups that I cannot help but find sexy.I gave this 1938 film a 8 out of 10. I didn't not give it the extra star because I find the story a bit condescending in a way during the MANY arguments between Eliza and Henry. I just think it was not necessary and could have been more pleasing/gratifying towards the end. Other then that, this film and its story is perfection; a true beauty.

. . . 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.

A pretty wonderful film of the George Bernard Shaw play. Both Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller are terrific in the leads, and this production brings out both the fun and wit of Shaw's words, and the sharp, complex, and sometimes paradoxical political and social observations underneath. Dated in style, yes, and Hiller is a bit older than ideal for the role's innocence. And some of the supporting performances are too stagy (although some are very good indeed). But overall this is a lot of fun, and quite thought provoking, with a nicely ambiguous ending.