The Taming of the Shrew

Liz. Dick. A young Michael York. What's not to like?

Quite a lot, actually. While the Zeffirelli TAMING OF THE SHREW looks great with its stunning sets and costumes even Joan Crawford would envy, this movie fails to take flight. I posit two reasons. First, I just couldn't buy Richard Burton's Petruchio. Burton plays Petruchio as a man long on bravado, but I never got the sense that he knew what he was doing or that he possessed the resolution and cruelty that the role requires. Perhaps it was the actor's decision to grin like a monkey throughout the production; it's hard to say. Second, the film takes too much time with its setup and not enough with the actual taming. When the last act shows us the depth of Katherine's retraining, we don't buy it because we didn't get enough of a sense of her sufferings.

I wanted to like THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. I really did. Unfortunately, Zeffirelli's is one of the less satisfying of play's incarnations that I've seen.