PLAZA THEATRE

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 148, 18 March 1939, Page 15

PLAZA THEATRE

“Pygmalion”

“Pygmalion,” which began yesterday at the Plaza Theatre, ie one of the most important films of recent years, not only because it is the first time a play by George Bernard Shaw has been filmed to thg author’s full satisfaction, but also because it demonstrates that a brilliant stage play can, under the right circumstances, be transferred to the screen without losing any of its brilliance. “Pygmalion.” could have been an important film without necessarily being a good one: thanks to splendid work from all concerned, it is more than good. There may be some who will disagree, but to my mind “Pygmalion” is the triumph it is because it has been treated as a film and not as a play, except, perhaps, in the final sequences -which are rather statid. Shaw himself seems to have learnt a lesson since the few early unsuccessful efforts to film his plays. Instead of insisting, as he once did, that his work must go on the screen exactly as it was written for the stage, he has permitted cinematic licence. Every word in the film was written by its author—which is a revolutionary state of affairs for any screen play!—but at the same time the mass of dialogue has been skilfully adapted, and skilfully directed. Except in the final scenes, as I have mentioned, the story moves and is alive. It is not just an occasion for Shavian philosophizing, but a deliciously amusing and often uproarious screen comedy. If only it could be arranged, the best way to see “Pygmalion” would be to see it alone; only thus could one appreciate the full flowering of Shaw's wit as this modern interpretation of the Pygmalion and Galatea legend unfolds. Since the theatre will be crowded deservedly, one must resign oneself to losing some of the most sparkling dialogue ever heard from the screen, in the laughter which it produces. One can, of course, see the film more than once, which is by no means an extravagant suggestion.

“Pygmalion” is more than a very good film. It is an event; and that applies particularly to the screen debut of Wendy Hiller as Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flowergirl—“so deliciously low, so horribly dirty” and therefore a fit subject for Professor Higgins’s great experiment. Eliza merely wanted “to be taught to speak like a lady in a florist’s shop”; but Professor Higgin s did more. For a bet lie turned her into a

great lady who passed with royalty, and then, having satisfied his inordinate ego, he tried to throw her back into the gutter Through every stage of Eliza’s transformation, Wendy Hiller is perfect; and she remains human, which is not an easy task in a Shaw play. As the boorish, cal-

lous professor o f phonetics, Leslie Howard is magnificent but unreal. He makes it so obvious all the time that lie has no heart at all that it is a trifle hard to believe him when he discovers one in the final scene. The rest of the cast reads like a “Who’s Who’’ of the English stage. All of them help the picture’s triumph. None more so than Wilfred Lawson as the miraculous dustman.