![]() ![]() With the intercession of Venus the statue comes alive, after which the sculptor and his creation marry and have a son, Paphos. The myth of Pygmalion and Galatea tells the story of a Cypriot sculptor who loses interest in women when he witnesses the behavior of local prostitutes, but then falls in love with the statue he carves out of ivory. It will be argued here that the film makers fundamentally misunderstood Eliza’s development after Higgins taught her to be a lady or, to put it another way, the kind of woman Pygmalion’s Galatea, when given life, actually becomes. Nigel Alexander goes so far as to say that “neither the directors of the film nor the author of the musical version understood Shaw’s Pygmalion” (Shaw, p. ![]() There are, however, major differences between Shaw’s play and George Cukor’s musical which become more evident when the play and film are compared. Much of the film’s screenplay stays close to the original, and the characterizations are so similar that the film may at first seem a faithful adaptation of the play. Eliza Doolittle keeps turning into Audrey Hepburn, Henry Higgins into Rex Harrison, and Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loew’s score plays in the background. My Fair Lady is such a classic musical that it is difficult to escape its influence when reading George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion today. ![]()
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