La mégère apprivoisée

This very maligned film may not be great Shakespeare, but it is good fun. Mary Pickford's biographer Scott Eyman points out that this film has a reasonable ancestry, being based on David Garrick's performing edition of the play. Be that as itr may, Doug and Mary give us less than half of the text, and throughout the film they play it safe by alternating between silent pantomime and heavy theatrical declamation. Playing it safe? In 1929 it was still not clear whether or not sound was a passing fad.

Of the two stars, Doug is clearly the better. Director Sam Taylor moulds the roles around the performer, and not the other way around, which was unwise but understandable. The Fairbanks image suits Petruchio better than Pickford's suits Kate. (At her best Pickford is magnificent, at her worst embarrassing. She herself called it one of her worst performances, and there is no reason to doubt her.)

For an early talkie it has remarkable fluidity, though it is only the 1966 re-edited version that is available today. (When I approached the Mary Pickford Company in 1992 to see if I could arrange a screening of the 1929 release print - which was longer and had a different score - I was politely but firmly told to go away!)

Two points of interest. This film was emphatically not the box office flop that many writers have claimed; it returned a healthy profit on its first release. And the credit line "by William Shakespeare, with additional dialogue by Sam Taylor" is pure myth. It appears not in the script, the 1966 nor in the 1929 (I have it on reliable authority) prints of the film. Where do these things get started?

This early sound movie blows a hole in the theory that all sound films from this era were static, clumsy affairs due to the camera being imprisoned in a soundproof booth to avoid the sound of its machinery registering on the microphones. The camera is very fluid in this otherwise ordinary adaptation of Shakespeare's play.

Hollywood royalty Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford star as Kate and Petruchio, the warring couple who really love each other on the sly. Their marriage was a sham by the time this flick came out, and both their careers were on the wane, but they give reasonable enough performances, even though Fairbanks looks a few years too old for his part when the camera gets close. There's still a tendency to exaggerate their gestures and overact to responses to words being spoken, but they're no worse than any other stars making their first sound films.

It's clear that Hollywood back then had no more confidence in the intelligence of its audience than it does today: this is Shakespeare for the common man, with the pith of the Bard's prose removed in order to make the words readily understandable to all. Although the film is little more than an hour long, it does begin to drag during the last twenty minutes but, that aside, it's not a bad effort.

This is a wonderfully entertaining movie. I'm a fan of Shakespeare, having seen live performances of all the plays, including a dozen different Shrews, my favorite of his comedies. This movie is not a full or faithful version of Shakespeare's play, but objecting to the film for either of these reasons is silly because the producers, Fairbanks and Pickford, intended it as a star vehicle for themselves, which it succeeds in being. Petruchio fits perfectly the Fairbanks persona and Kate is well within Pickford's abilities. Also, Pickford is gorgeous and I loved her costumes and all the closeups of her pouting and fuming and winking knowingly. Apparently she thought this was her worst performance, but this viewer thinks she did just fine.

As to the unfaithfulness to the text, the film has Kate overhearing Petruchio's plan to tame her and she then turns the tables on him. Though not Shakespeare, this works in the film. As to faults, I did think Grumio's sneezing fit overlong and the frequent closeups of his reactions throughout the film were annoying. I suppose his part was built up to provide additional comedy, which was unnecessary. Aside from Petruchio's tedious apple core munching, which was Fairbank's idea, much of Shakespeare's wittiest dialog and jokes are intact and just as funny today as they were 400 years ago.

This film essentially begins with a young man named "Horentsio" (Geoffrey Wardwell) desiring to marry a woman by the name of "Bianca" (Dorothy Jordan) who is the daughter of a wealthy man named "Baptista" (Edwin Maxwell). The only problem is that Baptista refuses to give Bianca away in marriage until her older sister "Katherine" (Mary Pickford) is wed first. And therein lies the rub as nobody--and I mean absolutely nobody--wants to marry Katherine as she has an extreme temper and a generally bad disposition all around. However, as luck would have it, just when both Horentsio and Baptista think the situation is hopeless, along comes a superbly confident young man named "Petruchio" (Douglas Fairbanks) who is not only excited about the challenge but also thinks quite highly of the dowry which he will acquire should he marry Katherine. For her part, Katherine wants nothing to do with Petruchio and for that reason she intends to make things as difficult as possible for all concerned. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this film deviated quite substantially from the actual play by William Shakespeare. That being said, while I don't normally like Hollywood adaptations, I thought that this one turned out quite well--all things considered. I especially liked the over-the-top facial expressions by both Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks which were, no doubt, a product of the transition from silent films to those incorporating sound. Be that as it may, I enjoyed this movie and I have rated it accordingly. Above average.

Just as an additional; comment to one of the earlier reviews - Channel 4 in England did show the original 1929 version of this film in the late 1980's. The print was in excellent shape and the lack of music did not greatly harm the film. Unfortunately although I taped it at the time I've since erased it and the public domain copy I bought later is the 1966 re-dubbed and cut version - which is not as good.