All She Desires: Barbara Stanwyck

We are in Bologna for Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026. Molly Haskell curated this section on American actress, model and dancer Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990), a versatile professional with a strong, realistic screen presence. By 1944, Stanwyck had become the highest-paid woman in the United States. After a short but notable career as a stage actress in the late 1920s, she made 85 films in 38 years in Hollywood before turning to television. She was a favourite of her directors, including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra. Scheduled in Bologna are several classics including Capra's Ladies of Leisure (1930), King Vidor's Stella Dallas (1937), Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve (1941) and Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944).


French postcard by Editions P.I., offered by Victoria S.A. (Biscuits, Chocolates and Patisserie), Brussels. Photo: Paramount Pictures, 1950. Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944).


British Real Photograph postcard, London, no. FS 120. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck in His Affair (William A. Seiter, 1937).


Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 2011. Photo: Paramount Films.


Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 2113. Photo: Warner Bros.


Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 2639. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.


Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 3840. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor in His Brother's Wife (W.S. Van Dyke, 1936). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.


Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 8610. Photo: Paramount Films.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. W 68. Photo: Paramount.


German postcard, no. 87. Photo: Paramount / Warner Bros.


French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 323. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), 1953.

An extremely versatile actress who could adapt to any role

Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens in 1907 in Brooklyn, New York. She was the daughter of Catherine Ann (McPhee) and Byron E. Stevens, a bricklayer. Her mother died of complications from a miscarriage after she was accidentally knocked off a trolley by a drunk. Two weeks after the funeral, her father, Byron Stevens, joined a work crew digging the Panama Canal and was never seen again. Barbara was brought up by her elder sister, Mildred and was partially raised in foster homes. Ruby toured with Mildred during the summers of 1916 and 1917, and practised her sister's routines backstage.

At the age of 14, she dropped out of school to take a job wrapping packages at a department store in Brooklyn. Later, she went to work at the local telephone company, but she had the urge to enter show business. In 1923, a few months before her 16th birthday, Ruby auditioned for a place in the chorus at the Strand Roof, a nightclub over the Strand Theatre in Times Square. A few months later, she obtained a job as a dancer in the 1922 and 1923 seasons of the Ziegfeld Follies, dancing at the New Amsterdam Theatre.

In 1926, she played a chorus girl in the play 'The Noose'. It became one of the most successful plays of the season, running on Broadway for nine months and 197 performances. Ruby changed her name to Barbara Stanwyck by combining the first name of her character, Barbara Frietchie, with the last name of another actress in the play, Jane Stanwyck. Stanwyck became a Broadway star soon afterwards, when she was cast in her first leading role in 'Burlesque' (1927). She received rave reviews, and it was a huge hit. The producer had great plans for her, but the Hollywood offers kept coming.

In 1928, Barbara moved to Hollywood. Stanwyck's first sound film was The Locked Door (George Fitzmaurice, 1929) opposite Rod La Rocque, followed by Mexicali Rose (Erle C. Kenton, 1929). Neither film was successful. Nonetheless, Frank Capra chose Stanwyck for his romantic drama Ladies of Leisure (Frank Capra, 1930) with Ralph Graves, and it established an enduring friendship with the director. He would often choose her to be the star of his films.

Barbara Stanwyck soon proved to be an extremely versatile actress who could adapt to any role. She was equally at home in all genres, from melodramas, such as Forbidden (Frank Capra, 1932) and Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937), to thrillers, such as Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944), also starring Fred MacMurray. She was the ambitious woman sleeping her way to the top from 'the wrong side of the tracks' in Baby Face (Alfred E. Green, 1933), a pre-code classic. She also excelled in comedies such as Remember the Night (Mitchell Leisen, 1940) and The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) opposite Henry Fonda, and in Westerns, such as Union Pacific (Cecil B. DeMille, 1939) with Joel McCrea.


Italian postcard by S.A. Arte della Stampa, Roma. Photo: Columbia. Barbara Stanwyck and Nils Asther in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra, 1932). Caption: In war, just like in love, you need to be feared... hated...


Vintage promotion card for Lux Toilet Soap. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.


American postcard by Lux Soap, no. 008011E. Photo: R.K.O. Caption: Barbara Stanwyck, R.K.O. Star says: "Lux Toilet Soap's active lather leaves skin deliciously fragrant. It's the best way I know to protect daintiness!"


Italian postcard by Rizzoli & C., Milano, 1936. Photo: 20th Century Fox.


British postcard by Milton, no. 87. Photo: Warner Bros & Vitaphone Pictures.


British postcard by Valentine & Sons LTD., Dundee and London, no. 146.


Spanish postcard by SOBE, no. 499. Sent by mail in 1949. Photo: Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper in Meet John Doe (Frank Capra, 1941).


French postcard by E.C., Rueil Malmaison, no. 543. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.


Belgian collector card by Kwatta, Bois d'Haine, no. C. 107. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (M.G.M.). Barbara Stanwyck in B.F.'s Daughter (Robert Z. Leonard, 1948).


Belgian collector card by Kwatta, Bois D 'Haine, no. C. 155. Photo: M.G.M. Richard Hart and Barbara Stanwyck in B.F.'s Daughter (Robert Z. Leonard, 1948).

A stormy marriage and gay rumours

Barbara Stanwyck was also well known for her TV roles as Victoria, the matriarch of the Barkley family in the Western series The Big Valley (1965). In 1983, she also played in the hit mini-series The Thorn Birds (1983), which did much to keep her in the public eye. She turned in an outstanding performance as Mary Carson. One of her last roles was in the hit drama series The Colbys (1985).

Barbara Stanwyck died in 1990 in Santa Monica, California. On the Cinema Ritrovato site, Molly Haskell writes: "Her ability to connect directly with an audience begins with the voice – lush, weary, tender, worldly, skeptical, ranging nimbly between hard and soft. It could be metallic, mannish and brittle or gentle as a down pillow, sometimes within the same film, as befits an actress who was at ease in every genre, from woman’s melodrama to the western, with noir and screwball comedy in between. More iconoclast than icon, more a character star on the order of Bogie or Cagney, she was neither a great beauty nor a glamour puss. The importance of this – her refusal or inability to be simplified into a single image – has to be seen as a major factor in her longevity. If she was underappreciated in her time, her minimalist gifts – the fluid movement, the stillness in repose, the sense of interiority – have come to seem ultramodern. A cross-genre retrospective will showcase the many facets of this iconoclast."

She was 82 and left 93 films and a host of TV appearances as her legacy. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress four times, for Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937), Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941), Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) and Sorry, Wrong Number (Anatole Litvak, 1948).For her television work, she won three Emmy Awards, for The Barbara Stanwyck Show (1961), The Big Valley (1966) and The Thorn Birds (1983). Her performance in The Thorn Birds also won her a Golden Globe. She received an Honorary Oscar at the 1982 Academy Award ceremony and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1986. She was also the recipient of honorary lifetime awards from the American Film Institute (1987), the Film Society of Lincoln Centre (1986), the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (1981) and the Screen Actors Guild (1967).

Barbara Stanwyck was married twice, to film actors Frank Fay (1928-1935) and Robert Taylor (1939-1952). Her son, Dion Anthony 'Tony' Fay (1932), was adopted. Frank Fay and Stanwyck's marriage and their experience in Hollywood are said to be the basis of the Hollywood film A Star is Born (William A. Wellman, 1937). The womanising, alcoholic Fay's career floundered, while Stanwyck's flourished for decades. Their stormy marriage finally ended after a drunken brawl, during which he tossed their adopted son, Dion, into the swimming pool.

There were rumours of affairs with Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford, but Stanwyck wed Robert Taylor, who had gay rumours of his own to dispel. Their marriage started off on a sour note when his possessive mother demanded he spend his wedding night with her rather than with Barbara. In 1957, Tony, her adopted son, was arrested for trying to sell lewd pictures while waiting to cash his unemployment check. When questioned by the press about his famous mother, he replied, "We don't speak." They became permanently estranged in February 1951, when he was 19 years old. The rift never healed. She saw him only a few times after his childhood. He was reportedly bequeathed some money from Stanwyck's estate on condition he never speak publicly about her.


Dutch postcard, no. X 3216. Photo: Universal International.


Dutch postcard by S & v. H., A. Photo: M.P.E.A.


Dutch postcard, no. 3362. Photo: MGM.


Dutch postcard by PEB. Sent by mail in 1950.


American postcard by Godfrey Herbert, The World Explorer, 1941. Photo: Paramount.


Canadian postcard by Fan Club Post Card, no. PC9.


Belgian collector card by Kwatta, Bois d'Haine, no. C. 312. Photo: M.G.M. Barbara Stanwyck and Van Heflin in East Side, West Side (Mervyn LeRoy, 1949).


Vintage collector card. Photo: Paramount.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. SC17489. Photo: Tony Koroda / 1981 Sygma. Ronald Reagan and Barbara Stanwyck in Cattle Queen of Montana (Allan Dwan, 1954).


German postcard by Anco, no. 1/77. Photo: Four Star Margate. Barbara Stanwyck as Victoria Barkley in the TV series The Big Valley (1965).


German postcard by Anco, no. 1/77. Photo: Four Star Margate. Barbara Stanwyck as Victoria Barkley, Linda Evans, Lee Majors, Richard Long and Peter Breck in the TV series The Big Valley (1965). Caption: Familie Barkley (Barkley Family).

Sources: Denny Jackson (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Viva Varda! Il cinema è donna

We are in Bologna for Il Cinema Ritrovato 2026, the 40th edition of our favourite film festival. EFSP starts its series of posts on the exhibition 'Viva Varda! Il cinema è donna' (Cinema is a woman) at the Galleria Modernissimo, formerly the Piazza Re Enzo underpass. It's a monographic exhibition dedicated to the first female director to receive an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement and a winner at Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Locarno: Agnès Varda. According to the website of the organising Cineteca di Bologna, 'Viva Varda!' takes Varda’s cinema as its starting point and presents a chorus of voices: those of female filmmakers from different generations who, through a blend of fiction and documentary, recount the lives, work and struggles of women both within and outside the world of cinema. You can visit the exhibition till 10 January 2027 (Summer closure: 3–25 August). If you can't come to Bologna, here is our personal post on Agnes Varda (1928-2019), for you.


Big Italian card by Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2017. Photo: publicity still for Visages Villages / Faces Places (Agnès Varda, J.R., 2017). Sadly, Visages Villages did not win the Oscar for Best Documentary, but Agnès Varda (1928) was the most fabulously dressed person on the Oscars red carpet, "arriving on the scene sporting Gucci Mini Jardin de Rose pyjama-style pants and matching cardigan". The Slate editor went wild: "Add a pair of white sneakers, rose-colored glasses, and her usual two-tone hair, and you have yourself a bona fide trendsetter. I, for one, would not be caught dead tomorrow wearing anything else."


Chinese postcard. Corinne Marchand in Cléo de 5 à 7 / Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962).


Chinese postcard. Scene from Jacquot de Nantes (Agnès Varda, 1991).


Chinese postcard. Still of JR in Visages villages (Agnès Varda, 2017).


Italian card by Cineteca Bologna for the section 'Documenti e documentari in anteprima Italiana' of Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXIII Edizione, 2019. Agnès Varda on the set of Varda par Agnès (Agnès Varda, 2019).

The starting point of the Nouvelle Vague

Agnès Varda was born Arlette Varda in 1928 in Ixelles, Belgium. She was the daughter of Christiane (Pasquet) and Eugène Jean Varda, an engineer. Her father was from a family of Greek refugees from Asia Minor. Her mother was French, from Sète. She legally changed her first name from Arlette to Agnès when she turned 18.

After studying photography, she became the official stills photographer for Jean Vilar's Théâtre National Populaire in Paris. She thus knew Philippe Noiret and Silvia Monfort, the main actors of her first film, La Pointe-Courte (1955). Varda liked photography but was interested in moving into film. She had filmed a few days in the small French fishing town of Sète, in the old fisherman's quarter of La Pointe Courte, for a terminally ill friend who could no longer visit on his own. After that, Varda decided to shoot a feature film of her own, leaving the artistic direction in the hands of her friend Valentine Schlegel.

The film follows the story of a couple who go to a small French fishing village to try to solve the problems of their deteriorating marriage. The director said she was inspired to create a film based on two different stories alternating with each other, from reading an American novel with a similar structure, 'Wild Palms' by William Faulkner. Varda made the film for roughly $14,000. All of the money went towards renting equipment and buying and processing film stock. None of the actors or crew members was paid. The film was edited by Varda's friend, filmmaker Alain Resnais. The film was immediately praised by Cahiers du Cinéma. Later critics considered the film to be the starting point of the Nouvelle Vague, the French New Wave film movement. Varda herself: "I was only 30. I had seen very few films, which, in a way, gave me both the naivety and the daring to do what I did."

La Pointe-Courte was a financial failure, and Varda made only short films for the next seven years. L'opéra-mouffe (1958), a film about the Rue Mouffetard street market, won an award at the 1958 Brussels Experimental Film Festival. Her next feature film, Cléo de 5 à 7 / Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), follows a pop singer (Corinne Marchand) through two extraordinary hours in which she awaits the results of a recent biopsy. The film is superficially about a woman coming to terms with her mortality, a common trope for Varda. On a deeper level, Cléo from 5 to 7 confronts the traditionally objectified woman by giving Cléo her own vision. She cannot be constructed through the gaze of others. The film was entered into the 1962 Cannes Film Festival. In 2019, Cléo from 5 to 7 was voted the second-greatest film directed by a woman (behind only Jane Campion's The Piano) in a BBC poll of 368 film experts from 84 countries.

Another highlight was the drama Le Bonheur / Happiness (1965) starring Jean-Claude Drouot. The film won two awards at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival, including the Jury Grand Prix. In 1967, she collaborated with Claude Lelouch, Jean-Luc Godard and Chris Marker on the documentary Far from Vietnam (1967), one of the first films to take a critical look at the Vietnam War. In 1969, she made the American experimental art film Lions Love (1969), which features Viva, Gerome Ragni and James Rado from 'Hair', NYC underground filmmaker Shirley Clarke, Andy Warhol and Jim Morrison.


French postcard by Bibliothéque nationale de France, 2003, no. CP 0344. Photo: Agnes Varda. Caption: Gérard Philipe and Jean Vilar, Suresnes, 1951.


Poster for Agnes Varda's film Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), starring Corine Marchand. Filmhouse, Edinburgh, 2010. Photo: Paul van Yperen.


French postcard by Ciné-tamaris, 2013. Photo: Hélène Jeanbrau Ciné-tamaris. Catherine Deneuve, Jacques Demy and Françoise Dorléac on the set of Les Demoiselles de Rochefort / The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967). Caption: Rehearsal of a scene from the film, summer 1966. The office of the Mayor of Rochefort, in Place Colbert, was used as the setting for the twins' apartment.


French poster postcard by MK2 for Cine-Tamaris and Films A2. Poster: Yves Prince. Photo: Zoltan Jancso. Sandrine Bonnaire in Sans toit ni loi / Vagabond (Agnès Varda, 1985).


French postcard by tënk. Photo: Ciné-Tamaris. Agnès Varda in a publicity shot for Les glaneurs et la glaneuse / The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000). The postcard refers to the exhibition Viva Varda at the Cinémathèque française (11 October 2023 - 28 January 2024).

Idiosyncratic visual compositions and personal, often ironic commentary

Despite Agnès Varda's successes, like the feature film Sans toit ni loi / Vagabond (1985), financing her projects often remained a struggle. From this necessity, Varda developed an experimental virtue and turned increasingly to documentary filmmaking, which she combined with a deliberately subjective ‘cinécriture’. Her auteur documentaries broke with the sobriety of classical documentary film through idiosyncratic visual compositions and personal, often ironic commentary. Daguerréotypes / Daguerreotypes – People from My Street (1975) portrays the small-scale trade on her Rue Daguerre in Paris. Les glaneurs et la glaneuse / The Gleaners and I (2000) juxtaposes Varda’s own, age-spotted hands with potatoes that have grown into heart shapes.

Varda explicitly positioned herself on the side of those portrayed, whilst at the same time making her own position visible. Technically, she made use of the capabilities of compact digital cameras (a P200) to shoot in a more personal style and with a small team. In 1987, she made an unusual film portrait of Jane Birkin, Jane B. par Agnes V. / Jane Birkin, Jane B… like Birkin (1988), and in 1991, she adapted Jacques Demy’s biography into a film, Jacquot de Nantes (1991), as a tribute to him.

From 2003 onwards, she became actively involved in exhibitions as an installation artist; at the Venice Biennale, she made a self-deprecating appearance in a potato costume with Patatutopia. For Visages villages / Faces Places (2017), she travelled through French villages in a photo van with JR to make ‘ordinary’ people – from the postman to the goat’s cheese maker to the factory worker – visible in larger-than-life portraits on building façades, in a declared effort to ‘make people bigger’.

Varda continued to work as a director until shortly before her death. In 2019, her documentary Varda par Agnès was screened out of competition at the Berlinale, where Varda was also awarded the Berlinale Camera, the festival’s honorary prize. She had already received the Honorary Oscar for her life’s work in 2017. Agnès Varda died of cancer in Paris in March 2019 at the age of 90. She was laid to rest at the Cimetière Montparnasse in Paris.

A few months after Varda’s death, a photograph showing her during the filming of her feature film debut, La Pointe Courte (1955), served as the template for the official festival poster of the 72nd Cannes International Film Festival. Agnès Varda was married to Jacques Demy from 1962 till his death in 1990. She had a daughter, Rosalie Varda, with French comedian Antoine Bourseiller, and a son, Matthieu Demy, with Jacques Demy. Her bowl-shaped bob haircut was her trademark.


French postcard by Languedoc-Roussillon Cinéma for their project 'Un site web autour du film d'Agnès Varda Sans toit ni loi (1985)'. Sandrine Bonnaire and Agnes Varda on the set of Sans toit ni loi (Agnes Varda, 1985).


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Photo: Jane Birkin in Jane B. par Agnès V. (Agnès Varda, 1987).


Chinese postcard. Photo: publicity shot for Les glaneurs et la glaneuse / The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000).


Agnès Varda. Wall Art at the Cineteca di Bologna. Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, 2019. Photo: Paul van Yperen.


Rosalie Varda at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2019. Introducing her mother's last film, Agnès par Varda. Bologna, Italia, 2019. Photo: Paul van Yperen.

Sources: Wikipedia (German, French and English) and IMDb.

Pygmalion by A&S (Saint-Just)

Today, 18 June 2026, EFSP collaborator Ivo Blom will give a paper at the conference Images en mouvement: les métamorphoses de Pygmalion at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. His paper is entitled 'Pygmalion transmédial: Pygmalion and Galatea (1912) de Elwyn Neame', and deals with the unique print of this film at the British Film Institute. This evening, there will be projections at the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux – Pathé. On this occasion, this post presents the complete set of 10 postcards from series 743 by A&S (Saint-Just) with staged scenes based on the operetta 'Die schöne Galathée' (1865) by Franz von Suppé. This operetta mocks the classic Greek myth 'Pygmalion'.


French postcard by A&S (Saint-Just), Paris, series 743, no. 1. Scene from 'Pygmalion', inspired by the operetta 'Die schöne Galathée' by Franz von Suppé (1865), which parodies Ovid's tale from his 'Metamorphoses'. Midas: I will let her place in the back of my garden. Ganymedes: Leave now... I hear footsteps nearing.


French postcard by A&S (Saint-Just), Paris, series 743, no. 2. Scene from 'Pygmalion'. Caption: Pygmalion: To escape my wrath, stay away.


French postcard by A&S (Saint-Just), Paris, series 743, no. 3. Scene from 'Pygmalion'. Caption: O Venus, that my trebling may rise to you! That this marble by you may become a woman!


French postcard by A&S (Saint-Just), Paris, series 743, no. 4. Scene from 'Pygmalion'. Caption: Pygmalion: Oh heaven! Is it a miracle... On her, on her forehead, her mouth, oh wonder, life and warmth seem to have fallen from the heavens!


French postcard by A&S (Saint-Just), Paris, series 743, no. 5. Scene from 'Pygmalion'. Caption: Galatea: What is this charming face smiling at me? Pygmalion: It is yours.

An unfaithful statue

The Greek myth 'Pygmalion' tells the life story of the fictional Cypriot sculptor Pygmalion. Although he claims not to like women, they are a major source of inspiration for his art. Thus, one day, he begins work on an ivory statue of a woman, which is meant to pluck out ultimate beauty. Post-classical sources name her Galatea. He works on it for a long time, and it truly becomes his masterpiece.

For centuries, the myth of Pygmalion has been a major source of inspiration for all kinds of poems, novels, plays, paintings and films. The best-known version of the story of Pygmalion from antiquity was written by the Roman poet Ovid. It appears in his famous book 'Metamorphoses'. This probably appeared around the year 1 AD. Many centuries later, during the Renaissance, it became fashionable among artists to draw inspiration for their work from stories of Greek and Roman antiquity. Among the popular myths that lent themselves particularly well to adaptation was the story of Pygmalion. In the centuries that followed, this myth has always remained an important source of inspiration in art.

A famous play about this myth was published in 1762 by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It was simply titled 'Pygmalion'. One of the first films was Pygmalion and Galathea (Elwyn Neame, 1912) starring Ivy Close. In 1913, George Bernard Shaw also published a play, 'Pygmalion'. This play later served as the inspiration for several films, including the famous musical My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964) starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.

In the 1900s, A&S (Saint-Just) published several staged, coloured postcard series based on operas and operettas such as 'Tosca', 'Faust', 'Manon Lescaut', 'Carmen', 'Cavalleria rusticana', 'Die schöne Galathée', 'La fille du régiment', 'Pippo et Bettina', 'La fille de Madame Angot' and 'Le passant'. There are also postcard series on books such as 'Paul et Virginie', and plays such as 'Cyrano de Bergerac' and 'Madame Sans-Gène'. 'Pygmalion' was inspired by the operetta 'Die schöne Galathée' by Franz von Suppé (1865), which parodied Ovid's tale.

In this version, Pygmalion refuses to sell his beautiful statue to old Midas, who has bribed Pygmalion's assistant Ganymedes to show it to him. The artist chases them and implores Venus to make the statue he so adores alive. His wish is granted, but he regrets his wish as Galatea prefers the love of Ganymedes. Vexed, Pygmalion implores the goddess to turn the unfaithful woman back into stone again, and wants to destroy it, but Midas convinces him to sell the statue to him.


French postcard by A&S (Saint-Just), Paris, series 743, no. 6. Scene from 'Pygmalion'. Midas: If this necklace may please you! Of gold, I possess much [more]!


French postcard by A&S (Saint-Just), Paris, series 743, no. 7. Scene from 'Pygmalion'. Caption: Galatea: It is blonde and auburn in colour. Its perfume is even sweeter.


French postcard by A&S (Saint-Just), Paris, series 743, no. 8 Scene from 'Pygmalion'. Caption: Ganymedes! It is you I love!...


French postcard by A&S (Saint-Just), Paris, series 743, no. 9. Scene from 'Pygmalion'. Caption: Pygmalion: You cheat me once more! Infamous one, disappear from my eyes forever!


French postcard by A&S (Saint-Just), Paris, 1900s, no. 743, 10 (end). Scene from 'Pygmalion'. Caption: Well, now I know what I can do with this, and without regrets, I will sell it.



Caption from Pygmalion and Galathea (Elwyn Neame, 1912) starring Ivy Close. Collection: British Film Institute.

For the full film programme of the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux – Pathé, see Fabula. And check out Ivo Blom's earlier EFSP post 'Kissing Statues' (26 February 2026).