George Bernard Shaw on Film [Criterion Collection] [3 Discs] [DVD]

This 30th edition of the Criterion Collection's monthly Eclipse series - a no-frills, pared-down issue of themed volumes featuring world cinema classics - features three key works adapted from the writings of George Bernard Shaw. The 1941 Major Barbara (co-directed by David Lean, Harold French and Gabriel Pascal) stars Wendy Hiller of Pygmalion and Rex Harrison of My Fair Lady, in a movie version of the Shaw play excoriating the hypocrisy of some Christian charity organizations; the megabudgeted 1946 Caesar and Cleopatra stars Vivien Leigh and Claude Rains, in its period tale of the exotic romance between the two famous rulers; and the 1952 Androcles and the Lion features Shaw in parable mode, with a wryly comic fable about the triumph of benevolence, as a slightly befuddled Christian slave (Alan Young) gets thrown into a pit with a lion, and survives the experience.