The Taming of the Shrew

While it's far from perfect either as a movie or as an adaptation of Shakespeare, this version of "The Taming of the Shrew" is enjoyable as light entertainment. It also offers a rare chance for silent film fans to see Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks together, in a sound feature no less. Fairbanks has a role much more suited to him than does Pickford, but it's still good to see them together.

Petruchio really is quite a suitable role for Fairbanks, and his buoyant confidence works well. His portrayal seems to be pretty close to the kind of character that Shakespeare intended. The role of Katherine doesn't give Pickford a chance to use her greatest strengths. She does project good energy, and has plenty of charm when it is called for, but at times her portrayal doesn't seem to fit the original conception of the character, and the role definitely did not give Mary the chance to display her wide range of talents with more subtle material.

The story is a rather loose, jaunty adaptation of the original, and there would be little point in making detailed comparisons. As a movie, most of it works all right aside from the occasional instances of awkwardly-paced dialogue and the like that are characteristic of so many films of the early sound era. Fairbanks does help make some of these moments less noticeable with his obvious good humor. There are certainly a number of obvious ways in which it could have been better, and it's fair to point them out. Yet it still has enough of the classic story, plus enough of its own energy, to make it worth seeing as long as you know what to expect.

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 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 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.

Early Hollywood's most famous couple, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, decided to collaborate on a film in an attempt to patch up their growing distant marriage. The play they chose to adapt to the screen, a Shakespearean one, wasn't probably the best choice in healing their tumultuous alliance. The loosely-adapted work, October 1929's "The Taming of the Shrew," focused on a fiery, mean-spirited woman wooed by a nobleman who attempts to calm her down. The movie was Fairbanks' first talking picture while it was Pickford's second. The critics were split as to how each passed the test making the transition to spoken dialogue films.

Variety was upbeat on "The Taming of the Shrew," commenting "While there is plenty of romance and dialog, slapstick and mud, there's no dirt, so that part of Pickford's career remains as clean as ever. Splendid settings in the Fairbanks massive production manner." Modern assessments of the film are less than praiseworthy, especially knowing in hindsight that both careers took a deep dive after the "Shrew." Says Leonard Maltin, the movie "was defeated by its lack of pacing and downright embarrassing performances, though it's undeniably fascinating to see Doug and Mary together in their only co-starring appearance." Years later, Pickford said it was her worst performance of her life. She did admit, however, that Fairbanks excelled as his portrayal of Petruchio.

"The Taming of the Shrew" was the first Shakespearian play brought to the screen as a talkie. The feature film was based more on the Richard Garrick's version of the farce, his 'Katherine and Petruchio.' The 1929 film incorporates about 20 percent of Shakespeare's written dialogue, and the movie's English, still Elizabethan, is updated somewhat to make it more understandable for the modern audiences.

Today's viewers to "The Taming of the Shrew" will take notice that Fairbanks' harsh treatment of Katherine is so over-the-top many felt back then the actor was taking out all his frustrations of the couple's personal relationship out on her. And Pickford's punchy attitude was equally demonstrative by her excessive yelling and physicality towards him, portions that were not written in the script. Pickford claims all the fault laid at the director, Sam Taylor's feet, a surprising allegation since both he and the actress got along swimmingly during their last collaboration, 1927's "My Best Girl."

As one reviewer noted, "The acting that had made Pickford and Fairbanks the 'King and Queen of Hollywood' rendered their performing style obsolete overnight. It's important to remember, of course, that the change brought about by sound had absolutely nothing to do with their deficiencies as performers, but only emphasizes the differences between silent and sound film. Watching a film like 'The Taming of the Shrew,' and comparing it to what they were both doing just months earlier, makes a strong case that the silent and sound film are really two entirely different things."