The Taming Of the Shrew – Directed by Sam Wood. Shakespearean Comedy. An out-of-towner in town to marry wealthily hooks up with a harridan. 63 minutes Black and White 1929.
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The first talking film of a Shakespeare play, this is also the first time (and the last time) Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford appeared together in a picture. They go at one another with bullwhips, which is less funny than the series of brilliant sight gags the film explodes with. (Tell me, please, how that business with the chair was ever done!) The screenwriter has balanced out the story rather neatly with the conceit that Kate, in order to reach a truce, by succumbing to his outrageous demands is actually taming Petruchio. The movie begins with the camera looking admiringly at the sets by William Cameron Menzies, and it ends abruptly and bafflingly by omitting the buildup scene to Kate’s submission speech. Pickford was a wonderful actor, but here she plays into her husband’s huge theatrical style and not to her advantage. Fairbanks throws his arms wide upon every occasion and tosses his head back and laughs longer than even his three thousand white teeth can lend reality to. If you handed him a cup of tea, he would do the same. But this style both suits the role and suits his limitations but does not suit Pickford’s genuine genius for realistic performance. Make-up gives her wasp-stung lips, and Costume wimples her head like the Mad Queen. She ends up visible as a character to us only when she shows her hair. The script is cut to include only its famous big set pieces, such as the moon scene and the dinner table scene. But that’s all right. The show is far more lively than the lumbering version with the Burtons. The Taming Of The Shrew a very great comedy, on three counts: It has dialogue that an actor can swing around like a cat by the tail; it has a supersonic plot; it has two leading roles that never misfire.
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