Pygmalion

Pygmalion (Criterion #85).
1938 General Film Distributors & Janus Films.
Starring: Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller, Wilfrid Lawson, Leueen MacGrath, Marie Lohr, David Tree, Scott Sunderland
Editor: David Lean
Directors: Anthony Asquith & Leslie Howard
Amazon.com listings: Criterion DVD, or the Essential Art House edition, also from Criterion.

A 1938 British film based on George Bernard Shaw's play of the same name. The screenplay for this one was also adapted later on into My Fair Lady.

After meeting a flower girl named Eliza Doolittle (Hiller), speech coach Henry Higgins (Howard) makes a bet with the Sanskrit scholar Colonel Pickering (Sunderland) that he can teach Eliza to behave and speak like a duchess in six months, which would allow her to gain employment at a florist instead of just selling flowers on street corners. The next morning, Eliza shows up at Higgins' residence asking for elocution lessons. Mr. Doolittle (Lawson) pays Higgins a visit, "selling" Eliza for five pounds. After some work, Higgins takes Eliza to a gathering at his mother's Chelsea home, where Eliza can't seem to shake her Cockney dialect while describing the events surrounding a relative's death. Eliza also meets Freddy Eynsford-Hill (Tree) at the party, and he becomes quite enamored with her, despite the two of them being in two different social and economic classes.

The next social event is a reception at the Transylvanian embassy, where Eliza runs across a former student of Higgins, Count Aristid Karpathy (Esme Percy), who has become a speech coach in his own right. Thankfully, Eliza manages to fool everyone at the party, but neither Higgins nor Pickering acknowledge her accomplishments. Eliza and Higgins later argue, where she threatens to leave his house, marry Freddy, and go to work for Karpathy. She does leave, but returns, and the two of them bury the hatchet.

Recommended film.