Taming of the Shrew, The [1967]

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Notwithstanding the excellence of films from Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh or even Franco Zeffirelli's later efforts like "Romeo and Juliet" or "Hamlet," Zeffirelli's 1967 production of "The Taming of the Shrew" ranks among the finest screen adaptations of a Shakespeare play ever made.

Critics may harp that Zeffirelli made too many cuts in the bard's verse, and, in fact, the director did omit over a third of the dialogue. But it is a convention with most versions of Shakespeare for the big screen that they are abridged; otherwise, most of them would not fit into a two-hour time frame. What's more, moviegoers are not always theatergoers, and it helps to make Shakespeare as accessible as possible without violating the spirit or beauty of his language. Not that Zeffirelli does any serious damage to the words of the play. He omits the Induction, the introductory framework that sets up the play within a play; he compresses somewhat the secondary love story between Lucentio and Bianca; and he pares down the longer speeches. To compensate, he provides more physical action, making the comedy more readily approachable to modern motion-picture audiences.

What is left intact is the boisterous vitality of the play and most of its poetry. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor star in two of their best film roles. Playing the tempestuous, ever-quarreling lovers, they are perfectly cast, not only because they are both fine actors but because they were tempestuous, ever-quarreling lovers in real life with their on-again, off-again marriage. Then there's the question of sexism in the play. A lot of stories in Shakespeare's day dealt with the battle of the sexes, just as a lot of movies today deal with the same subject, the Tracy-Hepburn films, for instance, or, more recently, "You've Got Mail." And somebody's got to win. In the case of "Shrew," it would appear that the high-spirited Kate is brought to her knees by the bullying Petruchio, but what Shakespeare implies and what Zeffirelli makes clear is that Kate has found an easier method of getting her way, through apparent submission. In fact, she is seen at the end of the film to manipulate the poor fool Petruchio without his even knowing it.

For those readers who may be unfamiliar with the plot, a brief reminder: As the story opens, a young man named Lucentio (Michael York in his first feature role) arrives in the city of Padua with his servant Tranio (Alfred Lynch) to attend the university. He hasn't been in town two minutes before he is smitten by the sight of the beauteous Bianca (Natasha Pyne) and devotes the rest of the play to winning her hand. But there's a snag: Not only does she have several other suitors, the father (Michael Hordern) has declared he will not allow her to marry until the older daughter, Katharina (Taylor), is wed. Kate is a shrew, and the father can't stand the idea of her living under his roof another second, let alone a lifetime. Therefore, the suitors to Bianca conspire to find a proper mate for Katharina in order to pursue their own interests.

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