Review of “Pygmalion”

    I’m “interrupting” my monster series for this, my contribution to The Stage to Screen Blogathon, link follows:  http://rachelstheatrereviews.wordpress.com/2014/09/17/reminder-the-stage-to-screen-blogathon/
    George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion” had its first performance in London in 1914, and went on to garner great fame and acclaim.  Gabriel Pascal obtained the rights to make a film version, and in 1938 he produced “Pygmalion”, starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller.  Leslie Howard was already a well known movie star.  Wendy Hiller had played Eliza before on the stage.  George Bernard Shaw wrote a new “embassy ball” scene for the film to replace the play’s referred-to-but-not-shown garden party.  The film was made in England, and co-directed by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard.
    As a courtesy warning to potential viewers, the film does contain quite a bit of language.
    The film opens - after the credits, and a prologue explaining somewhat the roots of Pygmalion - with a shot of flowers, pulling back to reveal Eliza Doolittle, apparently selecting from the pile of blooms to fill her basket.  She brushes past Henry Higgins, who we see from the back.  The camera follows Higgins, walking along through the hustle and bustle.  A scene of crowded Covent Garden fades to reveal a near-deserted Covent Garden at night.  Again we see Henry Higgins walking, then stopping to listen to a conversation between two men.  It begins to rain.  On the sidewalk, Mrs. Eynsford Hill and a young lady are waiting for Freddy to get them a taxi.  Next, we see Freddy’s unsuccessful attempts at procuring one.  He goes back to tell them his luck, but is sent out to try again, and  runs into Eliza, knocking over her basket of flowers.  She sits down at a column.  She entreats a man to “buy a flower off a poor girl”, and he gives her tuppence, without taking a flower.  After he leaves, a man in glasses and a bowler hat warns Eliza to be careful, as there is a “bloke” taking down what she says.  Eliza confronts Higgins, standing nearby with his notebook, and entreats the man who gave her the tuppence not to charge her.  The man assures her he makes no charge.  A crowd has gathered and Higgins, gazing out with languid eyes, proceeds to tell several of the people where they are from.  The crowd tells him to tell them where the gentleman (the man who gave Eliza tuppence) came from, and Higgins, with a flash of the eyes, proceeds to tell them - correctly.
    The gentleman follows Higgins, and they strike up a conversation about phonetics.  Eliza walks by sniveling.  Higgins implores her to cease her boo-hooing.  He boasts to the man that in three months he could pass her off as a duchess at an ambassador’s reception.  It turns out that the man is Colonel Pickering, who came to England from India to meet Higgins, and whom Higgins was about to go to India to meet.  Higgins insists that Pickering stay with him.  Eliza implores Higgins to buy a flower, claiming she is short for her lodgings, but Higgins calls her a liar as she had previously said that she could change half a crown.  She angrily kicks the basket at him, and he goes to leave, but, seeing a bird fly past, he looks up and says “a reminder”, then proceeds to drop money into her basket, handing it to her with a bow and a tip of the hat, then leaving with Pickering.
    The next day Eliza shows up at Higgins’ house, offering to pay him if he will give her lessons so that she can speak like a lady.  Colonel Pickering bets Higgins that he can’t carry out his boast of the night before, and offers to pay for Eliza’s lessons.  Higgins takes him up on the bet.
    Many or most of you already probably know the storyline from watching the musical version, “My Fair Lady”.  I had seen “My Fair Lady” (the film with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn) before watching this film, and was struck by how much difference the reading of the same or similar lines by different people can make in our perception of a character.  I will try to refrain from turning this into a full-fledged comparison of the performances of Leslie Howard in this film and Rex Harrison in “My Fair Lady”, but I would like to note how different they are.  While Harrison’s Higgins, to me, seemed genuinely rather cruel and unfeeling, Howard’s Higgins comes off differently in my view.  His Higgins has somewhat of a schoolboy quality - treating life as a lark, a game, a frolic.  He says cruel and unfeeling sounding things, but often with tongue in cheek, and a twinkle in his eye.  Howard brought a lot of humor to the part.  His expression during and reading of the following line, for example, I find hilarious:
    “If you’re naughty and idle, you shall sleep in the back kitchen among the black beetles, and be walloped by Mrs. Pearce with a broomstick.”
    Leslie Howard was excellent with comedy, and he brought some of that to the Higgins performance to great effect.  Also outstanding was his ability to use his expression and eyes in some scenes to give us a glimpse of the real depths of emotion within Higgins, hiding behind the cold and glib facade.
    I wouldn’t say that Wendy Hiller was my favorite Eliza, personally.  She brought a lot to the role and I enjoyed much of her performance, however, there were thing that bothered me.  She seemed to slip in and out of the Cockney accent a bit in the early scenes, which, to be fair, I think Audrey Hepburn may have done also.  But another problem for me is how stilted and unnatural her now-supposedly-proper English still sounds at the embassy ball.  It was very stilted in the scene of her visit to Higgins’ mother’s house, which seemed in keeping with the story, but by the time of the ball one might presume it would have improved.  That may have been an odd directing choice, though, and not Wendy Hiller’s “fault”.
    Scott Sunderland as Colonel Pickering was great, very warm and kindly.  Marie Lohr was wonderful as Mrs. Higgins, with great, dry line deliveries.  Wilfrid Lawson as Mr. Doolittle was oily and sleazy, as one might expect the character to be, and Jean Cadell’s Mrs. Pearce was great.  Freddy, played by David Tree, was quite silly in this version, perhaps overly so. (POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT)  Maybe they thought Freddy needed to be played over-the-top ridiculous in order to not have the audience disappointed that she didn’t choose him over Higgins. (END POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT).
    I don’t know that I really have much more to say, so I’ll leave you with a humorous line from the film, said by Higgins to Pickering about Mrs. Pearce (Higgins’ housekeeper:
    “That woman has the most extraordinary ideas about me.  Here am I a shy, diffident sort of man, and yet she’s firmly persuaded that I’m a bossy, arbitrary, overbearing kind of person.  How do you account for that?”
    How do you account for it.  :)