Page 30 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

An Auspicious Opening I 19

same year, Lamberto Azeglio directed an Italian version entitled La
Bisbetica Domata, with considerably more attention paid to the
establishment of a vivid mise en scene.
Silent versions of The Taming of the Shrew were shot in England
and France in 1911; Barker Will, in collaboration with theatrical
director F. R. Benson, recorded a stage adaptation originally per-
formed in Stratford; Henry Desfontaines mounted a brief Gallic
interpretation with Romuald Joube and Jean Herve. The biggest, and
best, of the silent-screen versions was that of Italy's Ambrosio
Arturo; in 1913, he starred Eleuterio Rodolfi in a then-epic twenty-
two-minute retelling.

"Kiss me, Kate!"
The Taming of the Shrew
United Artists, 1929; Sam Taylor

There were no other American films of a play which would seem
easily adaptable to silent slapstick. Though The Taming of the
Shrew continued to delight audiences via Broadway revivals, Holly-
wood didn't approach it again until 1929, when United Artists (U.A.)
simultaneously filmed silent and sound versions. The decision was
economic: Since only half the country's theaters had completed their
conversion to sound, U.A. hoped to ensure that this major feature
(the first, and only, costarring Mary Pickford and husband Douglas
Fairbanks Sr.) could be shown everywhere.
In 1966, when Pickford rereleased the classic, critic Philip K.
Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times praised what he incorrectly
believed to be exceptionally fluid filmmaking for its time. He stated:
"Surprisingly they don't seem to have been confined at all by the
camera and sound-booth strictures of that then-newfangled medium,
the talking picture; this version of The Taming of the Shrew gets
around so spryly that [before long] you've all but forgotten it's
Shakespeare." Apparently, Scheuer was unaware that for the rere-
lease print producer Matty Kempo reduced the film from its original
length of seventy-three minutes to sixty-six, intercutting action
scenes from the silent version shot with the free and fluid camera
that characterized presound cinema. The sound film had been static;
the "new" version was calculated to accommodate modern audi-
ences, unlikely to sit still for a filmed play.