The "Rotten Tomatoes" website says about this film that "It may not be reverent enough for purists, but this "Taming of the Shrew" is too funny - and fun - for the rest of us to resist". Well, much as I love, Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew" is one of his plays about which I have never been able to feel much reverence. I have often thought that it is one of those plays which, if it had come down to us in an anonymous form without Shakespeare's name on it, would arouse little interest today except among academics specialising in the Elizabethan theatre, who would be furiously debating to which minor dramatist of the period it should be attributed.
The play can be a controversial one today because it is a "battle of the sexes" which ends in complete victory for the man, a victory won by some very dubious tactics. Petruchio never actually physically assaults his wife, but he nevertheless subjects her to some unpleasant psychological bullying. Criticism of the play is not just due to 21st century political correctness. More than a hundred years ago George Bernard Shaw was calling it "altogether disgusting to modern sensibility" and Arthur Quiller-Couch "tiresome to any modern civilised man and to any modern woman, not an antiquarian, offensive".
The play deals with the two daughters of Baptista Minola, a gentleman of Padua. Both girls are beautiful, but the elder sister Katherina ("Kate"), the "shrew" of the title, is notoriously ill-tempered whereas her younger sister Bianca is sweet-natured and gentle. Baptista, however, has decreed that Bianca may not marry until her elder sister is also married, and Katherina's temper means that no men are interested in her. Eventually, however, Bianca's various suitors persuade Petruchio, a gentleman visiting Padua from Verona, to take on Katharina, hoping that if he marries her this will open the way for them to woo Bianca. The film omits the Christopher Sly framework device (no great loss) and cuts out much of the subplot about the rivalry between Bianca's three suitors, concentrating upon the Petruchio/Katharina story.
The film was originally to have been an Italian language one ("La Bisbetica Domata") starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. It eventually became an English-language movie, but it was shot in Italy with an Italian director, Franco Zeffirelli, and Hollywood's favourite married couple, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, brought in to play the leads. Publicity for the film was helped by gossip that their real-life relationship was just as turbulent as that of Kate and Petruchio; it was advertised under the slogan "The motion picture they were made for"!
Despite that slogan, Taylor was not perhaps a natural born Shakespeare heroine. She had no previous experience of acting in Shakespearean drama and was not the greatest speaker of blank verse. At 35 she was considerably older than the character as envisaged by Shakespeare. (We are never told Kate's exact age, but 16th century women tended to marry young, and she is probably in her late teens or early twenties. Anything over thirty, and even Baptista would have given her up as a confirmed old maid). Given, however, that Burton was to play Petruchio, it would have been unthinkable for any actress other than Taylor to play Katharina.
Moreover, as Burton himself was 42 at the time, given the controversial storyline a very young Katharina would have seemed too much like the helpless victim of a nasty bully. An older woman like Taylor could at least give the impression of a Kate who can stand up to her husband and give as good as she gets. There is a strong hint that her supposed submission to Petruchio is all a ruse and that behind the scenes Katharina is far from subdued.
The following year Zeffirelli was to make another Shakespearean film, the romantic and poetic "Romeo and Juliet", also filmed in Italy. Like that film, "The Taming of the Shrew" is beautiful to look at, with lavish sets and costumes designed to capture the look of Italian Renaissance paintings. Zeffirelli, however, wisely decided to concentrate less upon poetry than upon comedy, including physical comedy; some scenes come close to slapstick, including one where Taylor and Burton dash across the rooftops and end up falling through the roof onto a feather bed below. That one could have been from a Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd silent. Taylor plays her part with such drive and vivacity that any worries about her lack of experience in Shakespeare come to seem irrelevant.
This "Taming of the Shrew" is never going to be my favourite Shakespeare film. It is not even my favourite Zeffirelli Shakespeare film; I prefer both "Romeo and Juliet" and his later "Hamlet" from 1990. I felt, however, that the director succeeds in the difficult challenge of turning this controversial, problematic play into a highly enjoyable film. 7/10.
The play can be a controversial one today because it is a "battle of the sexes" which ends in complete victory for the man, a victory won by some very dubious tactics. Petruchio never actually physically assaults his wife, but he nevertheless subjects her to some unpleasant psychological bullying. Criticism of the play is not just due to 21st century political correctness. More than a hundred years ago George Bernard Shaw was calling it "altogether disgusting to modern sensibility" and Arthur Quiller-Couch "tiresome to any modern civilised man and to any modern woman, not an antiquarian, offensive".
The play deals with the two daughters of Baptista Minola, a gentleman of Padua. Both girls are beautiful, but the elder sister Katherina ("Kate"), the "shrew" of the title, is notoriously ill-tempered whereas her younger sister Bianca is sweet-natured and gentle. Baptista, however, has decreed that Bianca may not marry until her elder sister is also married, and Katherina's temper means that no men are interested in her. Eventually, however, Bianca's various suitors persuade Petruchio, a gentleman visiting Padua from Verona, to take on Katharina, hoping that if he marries her this will open the way for them to woo Bianca. The film omits the Christopher Sly framework device (no great loss) and cuts out much of the subplot about the rivalry between Bianca's three suitors, concentrating upon the Petruchio/Katharina story.
The film was originally to have been an Italian language one ("La Bisbetica Domata") starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. It eventually became an English-language movie, but it was shot in Italy with an Italian director, Franco Zeffirelli, and Hollywood's favourite married couple, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, brought in to play the leads. Publicity for the film was helped by gossip that their real-life relationship was just as turbulent as that of Kate and Petruchio; it was advertised under the slogan "The motion picture they were made for"!
Despite that slogan, Taylor was not perhaps a natural born Shakespeare heroine. She had no previous experience of acting in Shakespearean drama and was not the greatest speaker of blank verse. At 35 she was considerably older than the character as envisaged by Shakespeare. (We are never told Kate's exact age, but 16th century women tended to marry young, and she is probably in her late teens or early twenties. Anything over thirty, and even Baptista would have given her up as a confirmed old maid). Given, however, that Burton was to play Petruchio, it would have been unthinkable for any actress other than Taylor to play Katharina.
Moreover, as Burton himself was 42 at the time, given the controversial storyline a very young Katharina would have seemed too much like the helpless victim of a nasty bully. An older woman like Taylor could at least give the impression of a Kate who can stand up to her husband and give as good as she gets. There is a strong hint that her supposed submission to Petruchio is all a ruse and that behind the scenes Katharina is far from subdued.
The following year Zeffirelli was to make another Shakespearean film, the romantic and poetic "Romeo and Juliet", also filmed in Italy. Like that film, "The Taming of the Shrew" is beautiful to look at, with lavish sets and costumes designed to capture the look of Italian Renaissance paintings. Zeffirelli, however, wisely decided to concentrate less upon poetry than upon comedy, including physical comedy; some scenes come close to slapstick, including one where Taylor and Burton dash across the rooftops and end up falling through the roof onto a feather bed below. That one could have been from a Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd silent. Taylor plays her part with such drive and vivacity that any worries about her lack of experience in Shakespeare come to seem irrelevant.
This "Taming of the Shrew" is never going to be my favourite Shakespeare film. It is not even my favourite Zeffirelli Shakespeare film; I prefer both "Romeo and Juliet" and his later "Hamlet" from 1990. I felt, however, that the director succeeds in the difficult challenge of turning this controversial, problematic play into a highly enjoyable film. 7/10.