The Prince and the Showgirl works astonishingly well for such a stagey film. Laurence Olivier brings a theatrical approach to the project not only as the male lead, but as the director, and Marilyn Monroe is cast as a showgirl whose stage name is Elsie Marina. The fact that Elsie makes her living on the stage prompts her to see everything in life in terms of cues and lines. She evaluates people (particularly Olivier's character, Grand Duke Charles) in terms of how well they deliver their lines. Her running commentary on the believability of Olivier in his role makes the stagey quality of Olivier's acting seem uniquely appropriate for this film.

But the film's success cannot only be ascribed to Monroe's commentary on Olivier as an actor; it is also very much attributable to the fact that Olivier, as a director, knows how to bring out the sex appeal of Monroe (as opposed to Billy Wilder's over-the-top anti-sexualization of Monroe in Some Like It Hot). There are several scenes in The Prince and the Showgirl during which we simply watch Elsie move (usually through the eyes of the Grand Duke). But Olivier always gives us enough to think about during these scenes that we never have a chance to realize that we're simply ogling a blond bombshell. Until I saw this film, I can honestly say I didn't have the slightest understanding of Monroe's sex appeal. Now I do. Thanks, Sir Lawrence.

Because the two competing themes of The Prince and the Showgirl are lifted directly from A Christmas Carol and Pygmalion, I had a rather pompous title that I considered using for this review: "Olivier Repudiates Dickensian Sentimentality on His Way to Embracing Shavian Realism." But even if I rejected the title, I think that the most enjoyable thing about The Prince and the Showgirl is that it examines the assertion that love conquers all only to discard it.

When Elsie first encounters the Grand Duke, she cannot quite remember how she is supposed to refer to him, and consistently calls him "Your Grand Ducal" instead of "Your Grand Ducal Highness." She tries to sit before being invited to sit. She talks about things that couldn't possibly interest him (as they don't interest the audience). She seems to feel as if she should be nervous in his presence, and yet she is somehow unintimidated by him. She has no manners, but oozes charm. She is rather a perfect analogue for Eliza Doolittle in the presence of Henry Higgins.

And the Grand Duke is something of a Higgins figure himself. In much the same way that Higgins ends up trapped with Doolittle because of a wager about his ability to transform her into a socialite, the Grand Duke ends up trapped with Elsie because an extra socialite is needed at a coronation ceremony.

As was the case with Doolittle, once Elsie is given a few pointers, she manages to fit quite nicely into the aristocratic circles in which she finds herself. If the story continued in this vein, it would be dull because we have seen it far too often. But the Grand Duke out-Higgins Higgins. Higgins is a bit stuffy, overbearing, and authoritarian--but harmless. Because the Grand Duke is a national leader, his selfish and manipulative qualities come across as peculiarly menacing. He is an overweening autocrat who imprisons anyone that dares to resist his authority. He is mean-spirited and self-involved and a stern taskmaster. By the end of the first hour of the film, he resembles Higgins less than Ebenezer Scrooge. And Elsie takes it upon herself to show him that he needs more love in his life.

Those are her words: "You need more love in your life."

He tries not to listen to her, but eventually gets the message. And as he opens his heart to love, he rediscovers the joy of life. The transformation is as abrupt and complete as the one we see in Scrooge. The Grand Duke becomes an affectionate father, an understanding employer, a self-critical sovereign. And he owes it all to love.

Surely he and Elsie will spend the rest of their lives together. The Grand Duke will install the showgirl on a throne; they will spend their public lives ruling with a sense of justice and compassion; their private lives will be nothing less than connubial bliss. That's the way Dickens would have written the story. That's the kind of story people seem to want.

But it's not the story we get. When Elsie sees the giddiness that she has created in the Grand Duke, she asks, "It's not always fun, this childishness, is it?"

"No," he replies darkly.

It's really quite a remarkable moment in the film--the precise moment at which the writer (Terence Rattigan) rejects the Dickensian trajectory of the narrative. Love does not conquer all. No matter what Elsie and the Grand Duke may feel for one another, they both have obligations. The Grand Duke has agreed to call for a general election in his nation; Elsie has a year and a half left on her contract with the theater company. They cannot ride off into the sunset just yet. And something tells us that they never will.

When George Bernard Shaw claims to know what happens after the ending of Pygmalion, he is only speculating. When writers become critics of their own works, they are no more than the first among equals. Their interpretations are just that: interpretations. We can reject them if we find them unreasonable. I am free to say that I like my own reading of Pygmalion better than Shaw's. But I like Shaw's reading. I think it's reasonable for him to point out how silly it is for us to expect Eliza Doolittle to end up married to Henry Higgins. As he says in his afterword to Pygmalion:

The rest of the story need not be shewn in action, and indeed, would hardly need telling if our imaginations were not so enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the ready-mades and reach-me-downs of the ragshop in which Romance keeps its stock of "happy endings" to misfit all stories. . . . [P]eople in all directions have assumed, for no other reason than that she [Eliza] became the heroine of a romance, that she must have married the hero of it. This is unbearable, not only because her little drama, if acted on such a thoughtless assumption, must be spoiled, but because the true sequel is patent to anyone with a sense of human nature in general, and of feminine instinct in particular. . . . Almost immediately after Eliza is stung into proclaiming her considered determination not to marry Higgins, she mentions the fact that young Mr. Frederick Eynsford Hill is pouring out his love for her daily through the post. . . . Will she look forward to a lifetime of fetching Higgins's slippers or to a lifetime of Freddy fetching hers?

The Grand Duke is probably on to something when he accuses Elsie of wanting to play Madame de Pompadour. She likes to dabble in European politics and to ride in coronation parades and is clearly swept away by the ritual of the coronation itself in a scene that focuses on the almost orgasmic joy that she experiences while staring at the stained glass of the cathedral in which the coronation takes place. Her 'love' for the Grand Duke is a very puzzling kind of love, as she tells her friends. She doesn't know why she likes him, since he has no sense of humor and is very rude to her, but she loves him nevertheless.

Could it be that she loves him because he's a grand duke? If he loses his power after the general election, will he still be attractive to Elsie? There is always the possibility that he will win the election, of course. But Elsie tells us very early that she likes to be seduced with perfumes and the music of violins and the sentimental lies of a desperate lover. She knows herself to be precisely the kind of shallow girl who could fall for a prince in the way that she could never fall for a politician. And after the general election, even if he wins, the Grand Duke will be nothing more than a politician. We can imagine a happy ending if we insist on it, but I think Shaw (to whom this story seems to be a tribute) would have to wag his finger at us.

Recommended: Yes