---
name: "Anthony Asquith"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/anthony-asquith"
roles: ["Director"]
born: "9 November 1902"
died: "20 February 1968"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
average_as: "director"
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-09-20T21:10:39.276029+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Anthony Asquith

Director. Born 9 November 1902 in London, England. Died 20 February 1968.

## Details

- **Work:** Director
- **Born:** 9 November 1902, London, England
- **Died:** 20 February 1968
- **Also known as:** Антони Асквит, Энтони Асквит, Энтони Эсквит
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Asquith, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q360844, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002190/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/32919

## Streaming the US now

- **HBO Max:** [*Pygmalion*](https://film.one/film/pygmalion.md) (84)

For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country.

## Fi1m on Anthony Asquith

> Anthony Asquith spent nearly forty years putting British plays on screen and making them move. At his best, in *Pygmalion* (1938) and the Rattigan films, he is quick, well-mannered and exact; in the star-laden pictures at the end he is a hired hand.

Shaw's play tells you that Eliza Doolittle has her lessons. The 1938 film of *Pygmalion* shows them: marbles in the mouth, a candle flame that must not flicker at the aitches, a gramophone horn, and four minutes do what Shaw did with a scene change. The pace of that sequence belongs to David Lean, who cut it, but the instinct is Anthony Asquith's, and it is the instinct of his whole career. He took British plays, found the things they only talked about, and put them on the screen.

He learned to do that without words. Asquith spent six months in Hollywood in 1925 watching how films were made, came home to British Instructional Films and directed four silents, of which *A Cottage on Dartmoor* (1929) is the one still talked about, for how carefully it is framed. Then a lean stretch, until *Pygmalion*, co-directed with Leslie Howard for the producer Gabriel Pascal, started him again. The war kept him busy at Gainsborough and Two Cities on comedies, thrillers, war films and melodramas, whatever the studio needed.

The films that are most his came after, and nearly all of them came with Terence Rattigan. They made ten together, from *The Winslow Boy* (1948) to Asquith's last film in 1964, and *The Browning Version* (1951) is the one people mean when they say Asquith could direct actors. Anatole de Grunwald, who produced and wrote for him repeatedly, is the other name that recurs. His subject, in the Rattigan films and in *The Importance of Being Earnest* (1952), is the person who is not allowed to say what they feel, and he films them at the distance good manners require, which is closer than it sounds. He had wanted to make *The Browning Version* for years, he said, and it shows.

The case against him is that he was a good servant of other men's plays and not much more, and that the big international pictures at the end, *The V.I.P.s* (1963) and *The Yellow Rolls-Royce* (1964), are the work of a hired hand. We think the second charge is fair and the first is not. Look again at *Pygmalion*, where Harry Stradling lights the Wimpole Street house hard and clean so that Eliza stands in it like a smudge; we minded on her behalf more than we had expected to, and that is direction, not service. He could also soften what he served. The embassy reception is his addition, "I wanted to include a scene of triumph at the ball," he said, and the waltz the film enjoys more than Higgins does is the result; the last stretch softens with it.

Start with *Pygmalion*, which is where he started again. If it takes, go on to Rattigan, and to *The Browning Version* first.

## Biography

Anthony Asquith (9 November 1902 – 20 February 1968) was an English film director. Born in London, he was the son of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. He began his career directing silent films in the late 1920s, including *A Cottage on Dartmoor* (1929).

Asquith directed adaptations of stage plays throughout his career. He co-directed *Pygmalion* (1938) with Leslie Howard. He maintained a long collaboration with playwright Terence Rattigan, working on ten films including *The Winslow Boy* (1948) and *The Browning Version* (1951). Other films include *The Importance of Being Earnest* (1952), *The Yellow Rolls-Royce* (1964) and *The V.I.P.s* (1963).

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, bfi.org.uk, imdb.com, nytimes.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Pygmalion* (1938), Fi1m 84, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/pygmalion.md)

## Complete filmography (49)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *The Yellow Rolls-Royce* (1964), Director
- *An Evening With The Royal Ballet* (1963), Director
- *The V.I.P.s* (1963), Director
- *Guns of Darkness* (1962), Director
- *Two Living, One Dead* (1961), Writer, Director
- *Insight: Anthony Asquith* (1960), Actor
- *The Millionairess* (1960), Director
- *Libel* (1959), Director
- *The Doctor's Dilemma* (1959), Director
- *Orders to Kill* (1958), Director
- *On Such a Night* (1956), Director
- *Carrington V.C.* (1954), Director
- *The Young Lovers* (1954), Director
- *The Final Test* (1953), Director
- *The Net* (1953), Director
- *The Importance of Being Earnest* (1952), Director, Screenplay
- *The Browning Version* (1951), Director
- *The Woman in Question* (1950), Director
- *The Winslow Boy* (1948), Director
- *While the Sun Shines* (1947), Director
- *The Way to the Stars* (1945), Director
- *Fanny by Gaslight* (1944), Director
- *Two Fathers* (1944), Writer, Director
- *The Demi-Paradise* (1943), Director
- *We Dive at Dawn* (1943), Director
- *A Welcome to Britain* (1943), Director
- *Uncensored* (1942), Director
- *Rush Hour* (1941), Director
- *Cottage to Let* (1941), Director
- *Quiet Wedding* (1941), Director
- *Freedom Radio* (1941), Director
- *Channel Incident* (1940), Director
- *French Without Tears* (1940), Director
- *Pygmalion* (1938), Director — Fi1m 84, [page](https://film.one/film/pygmalion.md)
- *The Story of Papworth, the Village of Hope* (1936), Director
- *Brown on Resolution* (1935), Assistant Director
- *Moscow Nights* (1934), Director
- *Unfinished Symphony* (1934), Director
- *The Lucky Number* (1933), Director, Writer
- *Letting in the Sunshine* (1933), Story
- *Youth Shall Be Served* (1933), Director
- *Marry Me* (1932), Writer
- *Dance Pretty Lady* (1931), Writer, Director
- *Tell England* (1931), Writer, Director
- *A Cottage on Dartmoor* (1929), as Bespectacled Man in Cinema (uncredited) · Director, Writer
- *The Runaway Princess* (1929), Director
- *Underground* (1928), Director, Screenplay
- *Shooting Stars* (1928), Director, Writer
- *Boadicea* (1927), Writer

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/anthony-asquith