Pygmalion, the 1938 movie, will be screened this coming Sunday 19 October at 6pm, with snacks starting at 5:15 and an introduction by Rick Winston, at the Chandler Upper Gallery. George Bernard Shaw adapted his own play, in which a Victorian dialect expert, Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard), bets his buddy that he can teach a lower-class girl, Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller), to speak proper English and be received as a refined lady. The film later became the hit musical My Fair Lady, and inspired other film versions. Tracking the slant of these different versions reveals considerable social change. The film title refers to a classical myth, and the story plays on human relationships in a social world.

The Pygmalion myth is probably most familiar from Ovid’s narrative poem Metamorphoses, in which Pygmalion is a sculptor who falls in love with a statue he had carved. Disenchanted with the women of his day, the sculptor quietly wishes for the statue to come to life so that she might be his bride. On the festival day for Aphrodite, the goddess grants his wish.

There is no goddess intervention in this 1938 film version, but there is plenty of mortal magic. Shaw uses the story to launch into the complexities of society, class, gender and finally, transformation. This story is more thoughtful than the broad strokes that recent times allow - it does not settle for the quick fix of a man taking credit for the creation and control of the ideal woman. Shaw, an Irishman, was an activist in his time, championing women’s rights and human worth outside the entrenched system of class. One might see the musical version of My Fair Lady, as I did this summer, and be appalled at the misogynistic tone and outcome. The 1938 film, on the other hand, is far more subtle. The leading man is much more like the fellow behind the curtain - none other than the wizard of Oz - rather duplicitous even as he is well-intentioned, rather frightened even as he is heroic. The resulting ideal that Higgins creates is one who can handle Higgins’ own failings. The transformations do not stop, in other words, at the social norm.

Bookmark this link to stay tuned: http://www.chandler-arts.org/film_series.php.