Violet (2000)

Best Liza yet
First there was the smash hit play, then came the 1938 B&W movie with Leslie Howard is the ultimate pedantic as Prof. Henry Higgens and Wendy Hiller is utterly charming as Eliza Doolittle. I have a VHS copy of the movie but when I realized that the Criterios Collection has released a DVD taken from a very clean print, I leaped for it. I was not disappointed. Plus, it has the added advantage of all DVDs that I could jump to my favorite scenes: Liza on her first outing at Prof. Higgins' mothers home; Liza's father talking about the "underdeserving poor" and the final confrontation between Liza and Prof. Higgins. There is something about 1938 that makes the story of a professor turning a guttersnipe into a lady in six months that seems credible. By the time My Fair Lady came out, this was a historical play turned into a musical. As much as I enjoy the music from My Fair Lady, I prefer the 1938 film version of Pygmalion. Mainly because there is no dancing and singing to get in the way of the story. Of course, this film was made back in the day when all the supporting actors were serious about their craft. If you are at all a serious Shaw fan, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of the DVD. Buy it so you can watch it as many times as you want, when you want. You won't be sorry.

Matchless version of Shaw's great play
Pygmalion ,Bernard Shaw's magnificent 1913 comedy,is ideally served by this splendid ,perfectly cast movie.Leslie Howard -cast against the wishes of the author who wanted Charles Laughton in the role -plays Professor Higgins ,a wealthy phoenetics professor who meets Eliza Doolittle,a Cockney who sells flowers outside Covent Garden Opera House .He takes on a wager made with Colonel Pickering ,his best friend that he can transform her from a slovenly and slatternly ,uncouth girl into a lady able to pass as such in polite society.Quite a challenge for a man who described her as "a squashed cabbage leaf" and "a draggle tailed guttersnipe".For Higgins she is an intellectual challenge not a living breathing human being with feelings to be respected .In short he is a monster and a bully with a strong misogynistic streak but redeemable .

The scenes of her education in elocution are well executed especially where she is compelled to speak with a mouth full of marbles .Her transformation is a success -her society debut goes swimmingly .But what to do with her next ?She is now betweixt and between social classes .The play has a somewhat evasive ending but in the movie a definite conclusion is reached -not convincing ,but definite.This is not the only change from stage to screen -Shaw wrote ,at the request of the producer Gabriel Pascal an additional scene ,showing Eliza at the Embassy Ball which marked her full entrance into society and which was retained in the musical version of the paly ,My Fair Lady.

Wendy Hiller is outstanding as Eliza,showing in precise strokes her conversion from a working class girl of limited education into a poised lady of wealth and means.She is at her best in those scenes where she is half way there as in the meeting with Higgins' mother (adeptly played by Marie Lohr).Politely sipping tea she blithely chats about her father's drinking habits and the fate of her late Aunt's straw hat, "Them,what pinched it ,done her in".It is an great pity Dame Wendy made so few movies preferring to concentrate on stage work .There is more than a touch of Kate Hepburn about her playing here
Howard is the unfeeling intellectual tyrant to a T and quite how the Academy preferred Spencer Tracy's lacklustre performance (by his own high standards)in that nonsense "Boy's Town "is beyond me .The movie also lost out for Best Picture to the dire "You Cant Take It With You"-not the Academy at its most perceptive .
Look out also for a fine performance as Alfred Doolittle by Wilfred Lawson despite having most of his best speeches cut from the play-despite Pascal's reassurances
Pygmalion is an intelligent comedy -a rara avis today-and is well served by cast ,its joint directors Howard being one and Anthony Asquith the other and some crisp monchrome photography but above all by the intelligence and sparkle of its writing

Classic Shaw in classic film
Pygmalion (1938): Classic Shaw in classic film.
Directed by Anthony Asquith/Leslie Howard
With: Leslie Howard,Wendy Hiller
Criterion Collection's digital transfer edition 2000 offers a first rate black-and-white picture that is a pleasure to watch (in as large a screen as possible), in the original aspect ratio 1.33:1. The edition offers an information booklet but no other extras, commentaries, or other features. However, those familiar with the original G.B. Shaw play will be able to make a comparison with this script, which had several writers, including Asquith. Some divergences will be noted here, but on the whole this is a faithful adaptation of the original. The editing was done by David Lean, who started his career as an editor, and it is thanks to him that the pacing is so lively and the scenes attention-grabbing. There is not one dull moment in the whole play/movie, even when some of the inevitable Shaw preaching intrudes into the action. As is well known, Shaw, in his Preface, asserts that the purpose of his play is "didactic," as all art must be according to him, and the lesson to be learned by the English is that they can't speak their own language. There is a parody demonstrating this idea in the scene when Count Aristide Karpathy (Esme Percy), one of Higgins's former students, now practicing linguistics, claims that Eliza Doolittle, in her final transformation as a lady, is a Hungarian princess, for no English man or woman could speak his/her own language so perfectly. Only foreigners do, who have learned to speak it correctly. Shaw's point here (one of many) is that the English language is an inheritance, coming from the likes of "Shakespeare, Milton and the Bible," and should be revered and respected like a national treasure. Covent Garden cockney is to him detestable degeneration, something the outspoken (and rude) Higgins declares often. A second point is that speaking (any) language correctly will get you places. If you speak cockney, in its various "corrupt" forms, you have no hope of social elevation. A woman who squeaks out various sounds, as Eliza does, has no hope of social or economic advancement. On the other hand, Eliza's father, whose Welsh strain gives his speech a certain rhythmic intonation, can become an orator, a spokesman for the middle class, and attain both fame and wealth.

Leslie Howard makes a perfect Higgins, superior to Rex Harrison's, who received an Oscar for the same role in My Fair Lady (1963). Wendy Hiller is also in looks demeanor and native accent much more genuine Eliza than Aubrey Hepburn who overacted in the same role (and failed to even receive an Academy nomination). My Fair Lady, the popular musical by Lerner and Loewe, is generally hampered by the music itself, for it draws too much attention to itself--the endless songs interrupting the action too often for any points in it to be taken seriously. Of course any play has a right to be made into a musical, but at the risk of lowering expectations. Pygmalion is a sharp social satire, mocking the shallowness and mannerisms of the upper class, and the degeneration of the lower, and perhaps blaming the educational system that is responsible for such a deplorable condition in matters of language--although modern linguists (who accept "all" language) would not agree with him. Shaw's play also mocks romance, romantic inclinations, and the near impossibility of viable man-woman relationships. The movie, however, though demonstrating the above points, does turn to a "happy" reunion between Higgins and Eliza, unexpectedly, and against logic. Movies, especially light comedies, have an obligatory happy ending. In the play, Eliza marries Freddy, not exactly a romantic hero--but much more in line with Eliza's social class.