Pygmalion - a cinematic challenge

With his adaptation of Pygmalion, Rudi Meyer took a big chance. First of all, he put himself in business with George Bernard Shaw, the writer who had a reputation for being difficult both as an artist and as an entrepreneur. Shaw was a bold character who could make or break careers with his sharp criticism. But Meyer was interested in both the artistic qualities of Pygmalion and in what he thought was a good financial opportunity, so he took on the challenge.

The first hurdle Meyer had to face was represented by Shaw’s conditions. Shaw was well aware of the opportunistic ways of the film world, and wasn’t affected at all by its glamour. In order to maintain artistic control over his work, he wrote his own contracts. He dictated his conditions and all his counterpart could do was to accept them. Shaw asked that nothing would be changed in the script without his knowledge and consent. He also didn’t sell the rights for an indefinite time and worldwide release but only for an agreed region for a limited period of time. He also wanted a fixed percentage on the profit: Meyer couldn’t do much else than a lot of nodding.

Shaw’s artistic ideas were equally bold and uncompromising. In his plays, the focus is on dialogue, and not on action. His pieces are about the tension between different ideas. A tension that moves up and down, like a wave, driven by dialogue. This is in contrast with film’s tradition where the story is driven forward by action. And, generally, at the time, film directors and producers weren’t so keen on drama writers who, in their opinion, had no clue what film was about. Shaw on the other hand abhorred the film industry and its obsession with action. Therefor in the silent movie era, Shaw didn’t work in film. But with the advent of sound film, Meyer dared to translate Shaw’s work into a movie, and gave it to Ludwig Berger to direct it.

On 16 April 1937, Shaw saw the Dutch Pygmalion and he was reportedly “not amused”. Meyer had adapted his piece without his authorization. Scenes had been added and the Dutch Liza was way less pitiful and grubby a character than Shaw’s Eliza. But Shaw’s horror reached its climax at the end of the movie. In the original version, Eliza goes back to her sweetheart in the slums, leaving a shattered Higgins behind. In the Dutch film, in contrast with the spirit of the story, a romance develops between the two of them. However, in spite of the changes, he appreciated that Berger had maintained the spirit of the dialogue intact.

Pygmalion was very well received by the Dutch press, which found it quite shavian. The dialogues were especially praised, and the filmmakers were commeded for the respect they had shown to Shaw’s original. And now that a dialogue-driven film had been so successful, the Dutch film industry also saw a new opportunity. Dialogue was cheaper than action and – for a small market like the Netherlands – this was a very attractive thing. Dialogue film also seemed a more natural continuation of the Dutch theatre tradition that so strongly had influenced its cinema.