GBS wrote the screenplay for this adaptation of his play on which the musical My Fair Lady was later based, making this Pygmalion at once definitive and original, as he added new scenes. Shaw's ironies are delightfully interpreted in surprise close-ups and witty montages that support, but never overtake, the dialogue that is the essence of this film, which falls somewhere between Cinderella, screwball comedy, and an Eric Rohmer discourse. Shaw fashioned a modern fairy tale of class, gender, and transformation, the almost physical process of crossing over to the Other. His genius was to reverse the myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who fell in love with his statue and caused her to come to life: Professor Higgins takes a woman full of life and turns her into an object. Only Eliza can make herself an individual, and this metamorphosis is effected best by Wendy Hiller, an actress whose glamour is an interior quality and who radiates intelligence. Leslie Howard, meanwhile, knows the prissy (even pretty)-on-the-outside, inwardly slovenly quality of Professor Higgins.