Author: Inst. Abdulhadi Dhiaa Mahdi, PhD, Asst. Inst. Yousif Ali Yousif, Asst. Prof. Dr. Amjed Lateef Jabbar, Asst. Inst. Waqid Maki Numan

Abstract: The present study investigates the ways in which social dramas in modern Britain have framed social identity in drama and how such framings are transformed in the medium of film. It examines George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and John Osborne's Look Back in Anger and their film adaptations: Pygmalion (1938) directed by Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard, and Look Back in Anger (1959) directed by Tony Richardson. The study adopts the Conceptual Framework of Intermedial Adaptation Transformation. It examines five layers of connection, i.e., original dramatic text, social identity construction, narrative and intermedial transformation, audience reception, and contemporary cultural relevance. The study presents a qualitative textual, visual and scene-based analysis. It determines that the process of building Pygmalion's identity is one of accent, class mobility, linguistic education, gender self-fashioning and/or public recognition, which are manifested in a visible and audible form in the film adaptation. Look Back in Anger builds identity on the basis of masculine anger, domestic entrapment, class resentment, and post-war alienation; on the other hand, Richardson's adaptation adds wider social realism to enclose the stage realism. The study states that adaptation is not a mere reproduction of drama texts but a reorganization of social meanings in the space of cinema, camera motion, close view, cutting, sound, costume and performance. The present study contributes to the field of adaptation studies through the demonstration of modification as a “cultural rejuvenation” that makes dramatic identities visible, affective, and socially resonate across media.

Keywords: intermedial adaptation, Look Back in Anger, modern British drama, Pygmalion, stage-to-screen transformation.

Article Info: Received: 03 Jun 2026; Received in revised form: 30 Jun 2026; Accepted: 04 Jul 2026; Available online: 09 Jul 2026

DOI: 10.22161/ijels.114.5