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6 A Guide to Pygmalion
delights to play on the world of letters, which looks on him with constant astonishment not unmixed with suspicion.
In any case, the film seems to delight both critics and audiences. A typical review is that in Life (issue of Dec. 12, 1938) which says : "When first produced in 1914, this story of a tatterdemalion flower girl named Eliza Doolittle, who is taught by a phoneticist to pass for a duchess, shocked and amused England. Now screen-acted by Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller, a radiant newcomer to films, it is no longer shocking, but so brilliantly comic, so magnificently satiric that it will probably open the door for more great G. B. S. movies."
It would be interesting to study the changes Mr. Shaw has made in transferring his play from the stage to the screen. It is probably not very important, however, for the reason that the screen version of a play must be judged for itself, and must stand or fall solely on its merits as a movie. Pygmalion is a good movie to the degree that it is interesting and exciting to its audiences, which in general may know little of its virtues or faults as a play. The point of view from which to study Pygmalion as a movie, therefore, is its effectiveness on the screen. Is the idea a good idea for a movie? How successfully is the idea carried out? Is it clear, exciting, stimulating? This is the point of view from which the following Questions have been prepared.
PART IV: STUDY QUESTIONS ON PYGMALION AS A FILM
1. The title of Pygmalion comes from a mythological story, in which Pygmalion, a sculptor, makes a statue of a woman, Galatea. The statue is so beautiful that Pygmalion falls in love with it, and the gods, in answer to his prayer, bring the statue to life. What is the appropriateness of the title to the story told in the film? Would "Pygmalion and Galatea" be a better title? Or would just "Galatea" be better? Can you think of a more appropriate title than either?
2. In a story or play the "dramatic hero" is the person in whom the audience is most interested. He is the person whose fate is being determined in the story, and the success of the story often depends on the degree with which we identify ourselves with him. The dramatic hero may be a woman, or it may be a group of charac