Eric Stevenson This is a movie about a girl named Eliza who tries to learn how to speak proper English from a guy who's simply doing it to win a bet. The plot is fairly basic. I could have sworn that this was based on some Shakespeare play, but instead it was a George Bernard Shaw play which was loosely inspired by Greek mythology. The best part is actually probably in the first eight or so minutes. You get an introduction to all of the main characters at once. It's interesting to see how these characters will develop into the plot. It's a little tedious, but certainly worth checking out.It's really fascinating how intense this film can be. There are many great shots of Eliza failing and people acting out how she's supposed to be like. These characters mostly keep their personalities when the major conflicts truly happen. The camera work is quite impressive. I also feel that this film had a really nice length. It wasn't too long or too short and seemed to be in the middle for a lot of movies released at this time. I rarely see movies that are completely about language, so this was a nice and rare find. ***1/2.

runamokprods 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.

wes-connors 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

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.