Pygmalion
Short description
A phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, makes a wager with his friend Colonel Pickering that he can pass off a Cockney flower seller, Eliza Doolittle, as a duchess within six months. Eliza moves into Higgins's household and submits to his training in speech and manners, while he arranges terms with her father, Alfred, a dustman. The experiment changes Eliza, and it changes Higgins as well.
The film is an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's play, which drew on the ancient Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculptor who fell in love with the statue he had made. Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard directed; Howard also plays Higgins, with Wendy Hiller as Eliza. Wilfrid Lawson, Marie Lohr, Scott Sunderland and Jean Cadell appear in supporting roles. Shaw wrote the screenplay with Ian Dalrymple, and Gabriel Pascal produced. It was made in the United Kingdom, and it stands first among the four Asquith films covered here, ahead of We Dive at Dawn, The Importance of Being Earnest and Orders to Kill.
The film runs 96 minutes and blends comedy, drama and romance. On IMDb it holds a critics' rating of 8.2 out of 10 from 18 reviews, higher than its audience score on TMDB, which is 7 out of 10 from 165 votes; the gap suggests critics responded more strongly than general viewers. A credited cast of 29 supports the drawing-room scale of the piece.
What's left behind the scenes
- There was no scene in the 1912 play by Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), which served as the literary source for the film adaptation, in which Eliza accidentally swallows a marble during a speech therapy lesson. During the rehearsal of this scene, pain was reflected on the face of actress Wendy Hilder (1912-2003); she spat out the marbles she was holding in her mouth and said, “Leslie, I swallowed one,” to which director Leslie Howard (1893-1943) immediately responded, “It’s alright, we have spares.” This incident amused the film crew and other actors, and they decided to leave the situation in the film during final editing, and also included it in the musical version – the 1964 film “My Fair Lady” by George Cukor (1899-1983).
- The scene in which Eliza accidentally swallows a marble during a speech lesson was not in the original play. While rehearsing the scene, actress Wendy Hiller's face contorted in pain; she spat out the marbles she was holding in her mouth and said, "Leslie, I've swallowed one," to which director Leslie Howard replied, "No matter, we have spares." This incident greatly amused the film crew and other actors, so they decided to keep the situation in the movie and also included it in the musical version, "My Fair Lady."
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
