Shakespeare in Performance: Film
The Taming of the Shrew (1966, Carol Lastricati)
| Title | The Taming of the Shrew |
|---|---|
| Year | 1966 |
| Release Locations | Italy USA |
| Director | Carol Lastricati |
| Medium | Color video |
| Length | 2 hrs, 2 mins |
| Languages | English |
| Audience | college and university high school |
| Play Connections | The Taming of the Shrew (adaptation) |
Description
With Richard Burton as Petruchio and Elizabeth Taylor as Kate, then reigning king and queen of the cinema world, this lively production by Franco Zeffirelli rivals the Douglas Fairbanks/ Mary Pickford pairing in its exploitation of stars. If indeed it can be, and has been, argued that a great deal of Shakespeare's play gets lost along the way, the tradeoff lies in the ingenious ways by which Zeffirelli has adapted Shakespeare's play to the needs of the screen. For example, he embeds the Christopher Sly plot within the main plot by conflating Sly with Petruchio, and the drunken Sly remains vestigially as the creature fettered in a cage above the main gate to Padua. This clever transposition also has the unfortunate tendency to degrade Petruchio from his higher social class down to the level of the drunken and lower-class Sly. A raucous movie, it was bound to trigger some doubts, as the words of the following critic illustrate
Description from Shakespeare on Screen : an International Filmography and Videography by Kenneth S. Rothwell and Annabelle Henkin Melzer. ©1990 Kenneth S. Rothwell. Cited by permission. — Added 2008-11-14
Cast Overview
Production Team and Crew Overview
Production information courtesy of: Kenneth Rothwell