Pygmalion
Director: Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard
Year Released: 1938
Rating: 3.0
Classic story of literate but nasty Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard) custom-altering his student/guttersnipe Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller) to fit a debonair view of elegant womanhood - he pretends it's a game, but there's something more personal at play. While movies often show women as being sexually repressed, Higgins is clearly the one with the problems, not Doolittle, and the most compelling part of the story is Higgins trying to hide from his feelings for her through barbaric remarks and lashing misogyny. Contrivances abound - like the chance meeting of all three principal players in the beginning, for example - but it's a very good movie.
