Movie Review – The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew (1967)
Written by William Shakespeare, Franco Zeffirelli, Paul Dehn, and Suso Cecchi d’Amico
Directed by Franco Zeffirelli

Shakespeare was a product of his time. Yes, we can find instances of the playwright challenging the mores of his society, and he was a brilliant weaver of language. However, his views on marriage and women weren’t revolutionary, as we can see in the comedy The Taming of the Shrew. Perhaps it should make us feel better that from the play’s debut in the late 16th century, criticisms were leveled at what it says about women. I don’t expect these to have been very loud protests based on how women were treated in the centuries that followed. 

Franco Zeffirelli was an Italian filmmaker who would become more famous for his next Shakespeare film, Romeo and Juliet. We know from the stars of that film, who were underage at the time that the nudity presented in that picture was not consented to, but they were scared to speak up at the time. We can use this fact as a piece of evidence that Zeffirelli wasn’t that progressive of a thinker either, but they are moments in his adaptation of Shrew that hints that he might have been issuing some weak critique.

A wealthy man in Genoa is attempting to marry off his eldest daughter, Katherina (Elizabeth Taylor), who has garnered a reputation as a violent, argumentative young woman. His daughter Bianca is the opposite, a demure, gentle person. Thus, most men who come around are interested in Bianca over Kat. Their father insists that Kat must be married before Bianca; he fears he will never be rid of his eldest. A pair of men interested in Bianca look for a man they can pay to tackle Kat and find that in Petruchio (Richard Burton). This nobleman has just inherited his father’s estate and wants to wed. He also has a personality that creates explosions with Kat, and as the title tells us, he will “tame” her.

How Petruchio tames Kat is deeply problematic, even more so because they are the core source of the play’s comedy. The wedding is a site of public humiliation where Petruchio arrives dressed in an outrageously styled & colored outfit, which serves as a means to mock and embarrass this woman nonverbally. When they depart for their honeymoon to his manor home, she is forced to ride on horseback through harsh weather as a means for her new husband to exercise his power over her. Again, the play presents this as funny, while all I see is a strong-willed woman having her will broken by a petty, disgusting man.

Kat’s nightmares come to fruition when she arrives at Petruchio’s home, a crumbling, cobweb-filled manor. She is immediately uncomfortable, and her new husband doesn’t make things better by denying her food under the guise of ‘care.’ He states the food at his house is not good enough for her refined palette and throws it away, starving her. He also disrupts Kat’s sleep by loudly complaining about the bed and finding means to disrupt her sleep and leave her exhausted. The goal here is to weaken her physically so her will can be broken. We must ask ourselves where the line between comedy and psychological horror begins because this plot could be easily adapted into the latter. 

Some of Petruchio’s pettiest behavior comes when he goes through a systematic gaslighting of Kat. She will say something objectively true only to have her husband demand the absurd, incorrect opposite is the reality. Kat says it’s the sun; he insists it is the moon and forces her to agree. They both know he’s wrong, but the point is to shatter her will. Petruchio seeks to dominate her mind, and Kat eventually becomes so drained and weakened that it is easier to give in than to protest. This is punctuated in her final monologue, where she appears to endorse female submission to men, which I felt was quite sad, souring the story. 

Our leading stars were a real-life couple with much contention during their tumultuous relationship. The previous year saw Taylor and Burton star as a married couple descending into madness in Mike Nichols’s adaptation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I prefer that Taylor/Burton team up to this, yet I admit it is entertaining to watch them together here. Their volatile chemistry in real life results in captivating chemistry on the screen. Taylor, especially, is an actress I have slept on for most of my life because I saw her as someone my grandmother really liked, and thus, she was “for old ladies.” I was very wrong.

Zeffirelli attempts to undercut the harshness of the text by using cinematic elements to “lighten the mood.” The physical struggles between Kat & Petruchio are framed as exaggerated, comedic brawls. Their first meeting in Kat’s home devolves into a chaotic slapstick fight involving throwing objects and wrestling. The film’s score is playful & bouncy, one of the most overt attempts to soften what is a sequence centered around the assault and abuse of a woman. I’d be interested to see these scenes recut with a darker score and see if it changes the tone I felt while watching. 

Petruchio’s behavior is framed from the start as a warm character. He’s a sloppy buffoon but a lovable guy. Burton does a good job exuding a boisterous demeanor; he does as directed. But I felt this distracts from the genuinely troubling premise of the whole story, forcing a woman into a marriage she doesn’t want because her father is fed up with her.

The Petruchio archetype is far too familiar in US media. An episode of Moonlighting presented an abridged version of the story. While the adherence to Elizabethan English was impressive, Bruce Willis showed how the character of David had much in common with this manipulative character. Bill Murray has made a career of being a type of Petruchio both on screen and off. Ask Geena Davis about her experience working with him and his humiliating her in front of the cast and crew by putting her in a trashcan.

Kat’s final monologue in the film, an admonishment of the other women for not paying their men better respect, really soured the whole thing for me. I had forgotten about that from my college Shakespeare days as this wasn’t one of the plays that stuck with me. I can’t help but think Taylor is subtly adding to her performance, inserting a sense of defiance and snark toward Petruchio. But I also fully understand that could be my projection, wanting Kat to remain defiant. I haven’t seen the 1990s adaptation Ten Things I Hate About You, which reframes the story in a high school setting. But, I think any attempt to soften or modernize what this play was saying is harmful. It makes us believe that all of Shakespeare’s ideas were forward-thinking and positive. He was, after all, a white man benefitting from that and writing work that reinforced the patriarchy. I love many of his plays, but that doesn’t mean he was a good guy.