PLAZA THEATRE

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 154, 25 March 1939, Page 16

PLAZA THEATRE

“Pygmalion” The screen debut of Wendy Hiiler as Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flowergirl, who is "so deliciously low, so horribly dirty,” ami therefore a fit subject for Professor Higgins’s great experiment in "Pygmalion.” which is now in its second week at the Plaza 'Theatre, is thrillingly auspicious. Eliza merely wanted “to be taught Io speak like a lady in a florist’s shop”; but Professor Higgins did more. For a bet he 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 ot Eliza's transformation, Wendy Hiller is perfect: and she remains human, which is not an easy task in a Shaw play. As the boorish, callous professor of phonetics, Leslie Howard is magnificent, but unreal. Tie makes it so obvious all the time that he has uo heart at all, that it. is a trifle hard to be lieve 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.

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, be 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 mnsw of dialoque has been skilfully adapted, nnd skilfully directed. This story moves, and is alive. It is not just an occasion for Shavian philosophizing, but a deliciously amusing and often uproarious screen comedy.