Professor Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard), an upper-class, snobby intellectual encounters a lower-class flower-girl, Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller), whose grammar, etiquette and pronunciation are uncouth, to say the least. Professor Higgins enters into a wager with his friend Colonel Pickering (Scott Sunderland) that he can completely transform her and pass her off as a duchess in a mere matter of months. Anthony Asquith & Leslie Howard's Pygmalion is essentially a superior albeit lesser known version of 'My Fair Lady'. This version's dialogue is far more witty and fun and the droll humor is perfectly captured by Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. Henry Higgins really is a great character who is pretty much a complete elitist whose intellect masks him from his more humanistic emotional attributes. He is extremely intelligent and knowledgeable but is pretty much clueless when it comes to romance/relationships and Leslie Howard captures these dynamics perfectly. These two characters each are very different, with Pygmalion exposing how each one of them can learn from the other, leading to the looming romantic connection between these two individuals which isn't really even touched until the last 20 minutes. While this approach is definitely something to appreciate, the romance does come off feeling a little too brisk in it coming to fruition, though I can't say if this is something inherent in the source materal. Anthony Asquith & Leslie Howard's Pygmalion is a n elegant, whimsical film, featuring an important message about social class.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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