films

[Steven Pinker]

My Fair Lady is a wonderful film, but in some ways the 1938 black and white
film adaptation of Pygmalion is even more satisfying. It doesn't have the
singing and dancing, but the dialogue and scene structure are closer to
those of Shaw's original play, and as a result it is wittier and subtler
(particularly the scene in which Eliza shocks the stuffy aristocrats by
using lower-class epithets with upper-class pronunciation). It is done in
the style of the best English theatre and features a terrific performance by
Leslie Howard, less hammy than Rex Harrison's Higgins. (Howard went on to
play Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind the following year.)

Perhaps Yoda in Star Wars could be used to introduce students to VSO
languages.

--Steve Pinker