Pygmalion (1938)

(On Cable TV, March 2020) Anyone with some awareness of the much-better-known film My Fair Lady will find themselves in familiar territory, narrative-wise, with Pygmalion. Adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s theatrical urtext of “lower-class person being successfully groomed to high-class,” this film codifies the trope that would then be reused in many imitators, including the My Fair Lady musical. As such, Pygmalion can feel laborious to modern viewers, as it runs through predictable plot developments and feels almost identical (minus the songs) to the later musical comedy. It’s still serviceable, however: the quality of Shaw’s dialogue remains, and the breezy comic style does help distinguish this film from many other literary adaptations of the 1930s. Still, Pygmalion does pale in comparison to its inheritors and imitators—and I say this as someone with no particular fondness for My Fair Lady.