Shrew Business

Last time I saw Zefferelli’s THE TAMING OF THE SHREW it was on VHS, so when I found a DVD cheap at my favourite charity shop (St Columba’s Bookshop) I acquired it for my Z shelf.

I hadn’t realized that FZ’s career was so odd — something called CAMPING in 1957, lots of theatre and TV, and then SHREW as an abrupt superproduction, produced by the Burtons, cinematically speaking coming out of nowhere.

Having made an extra on THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD I could see where Burton had scooped up the English-language script contributor for his first film as co-producer, ex-black ops commando trainer Paul Dehn, and where he’d recruited Michael Hordern. But I figure Zeffirelli had also seen A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, as proof that Hordern could do farce — both movies have scenes of characters rehearsing their plans in parallel alleyways, with the director cutting back and forth. And both use houses with big central spaces surrounded by a gallery with a stair, staging action on both levels…

Victor Spinetti also comes from Lester; Alan Webb from Welles (CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, “Jesu, the days that I have seen.”)

Anyway, it’s fun. There are matte paintings done in almost renaissance style, beautiful sets, what is known as lustiness, and a nice moment where Michael York’s soliloquizing draws curious stares from Paduan street characters, as if they’ve never seen anyone do Shakespeare before.

The filmmakers’ solution to the plays more noxious qualities is, basically, to say, “Well, we’ve cast the stars of the twentieth century’s greatest love story, so there can be no question that this is a beautiful romance.” All evidence of torture and gaslighting to the contrary. Burton getting Taylor to say the sun is the moon is uncomfortably similar to the way he gets John Hurt, at the far end of the Rich career, to agree with him how many fingers he’s holding up, in 1984.

The script is quite impressive, since it contains several scenes Shakespeare didn’t think to include, and the characters go on talking in them, as if the blank verse was available. I can imagine Suso Cecchi D’Amico just deciding there needs to be a seen where Petruccio destroys Kate’s bed, and leaving Dehn to figure out what they can say to each other while it’s happening. Hordern can rhubarb amusingly while waiting for the next pentameter. Zeffirelli seems to have told him to wave his arms around in an Italiante fashion, which sits oddly on his frame, but shows off his nice long sleeves.

Burton can combine sonorous versifying with low comedy. Taylor’s fishwife screech is textually justified, as it was in VIRGINIA WOOLF. Her violet eyes get a lot of extreme closeups. Her husband’s bloodshot orbs do not rate such inspection.

Zeffirelli the misogynist (in the editing room, he would say “Cut to the bitch”; women who have abortions should be executed) probably saw no reason to question the four-hundred-year-old play’s sexual politics. It’s funny until the wedding, even with the discomfort of it being a forced marriage as far as Taylor’s Kate is concerned, and then not too funny once the torture starts. Taylor is given some quiet moments early on where she can suggest some attraction towards Burton’s brawling drunkard. And when she falls in line eventually she can hint that this is a fun game to play, master and slave. Can’t escape the problem that she’s been forced into it, though. At the end, they at least manage to make some suspense. Maybe one effect of the passage of time is that the servants are now the most appealing characters.

The Fairbanks-Pickford version was mocked for the credit “Additional dialogue by Sam Taylor.” This one has a jokey but far more respectful title:

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW stars Cleopatra; Thomas Becket; Glaucus; Major Grapple; Joe Beckett; Master Shallow; Max Kalba; D’Artagnan; and Foot.

The Sunday Intertitle: Harold Lloyd be thy name

I read about FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, a Harold Lloyd vehicle directed by the skilled Sam Taylor (EXIT SMILING) over at Observations of Film Art, where my all-time favourite annual event takes place — Kristin Thompson’s annual look back at the cinema of ninety years ago (with a modest assist from David Bordwell).

FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, plotwise, is a nothing, predicated on a premise that doesn’t seem to have anything to it. Harold Manners, millionaire, funds a mission in the slums by mistake, but then falls in love with the daughter of the founder. He has some misadventures helping with the mission, then his rich buddies kidnap him to stop him marrying the poor girl, there’s a chase and a happy ending. Pretty flimsy stuff — but sufficiently solid to attach Lloyd’s “islands” — his comic set-pieces. (Kubrick spoke of “non-submersible units” by which I take him to mean something similar, but with fewer pratfalls. Military enthusiast that he was, Kubrick used the pontoon bridge as his metaphor.)

The pun in this intertitle is so good, the whole movie may have been built around it. Which would account for the gossamer-thin plot. But that doesn’t matter, as the set-pieces are SO good.

Harold’s character is interesting — rather than being a boy next door, he’s a touch feckless and over-privileged, but this doesn’t make him unsympathetic. It makes him superhuman. Most Lloyd movies show him struggling to gain mastery over some hazardous situation, with our hero being handicapped by shyness or gentility which he has to overcome. Here, Lloyd’s victories are mainly effortless until the last act, when he gets a good work-out.

To round up a congregation for the new mission, Harold provokes fights with all the neighbourhood roughnecks so they’ll chase him into the building. The action is fast, furious, inventive and hilarious, and all the time we’re wondering what he’ll do with them when he gets them indoors. It turns out that he has no plan at all, and is rescued by the timely arrival of the police, which is a little disappointing but leads us into the next amusing situation.

(The lead yegg is Noah Young, whose praises I’ve been singing lately. A peerless plug-ugly.)

The climactic rescue is in itself easy enough, but Harold’s rescuers — Young and his gang, now allies — are all smashed out of their faces, and Harold’s new task is to get them to the church on time without them getting lost, arrested or killed. The sozzled bozos are incapable of sitting still, and rounding them up becomes an extended piece of Sisyphean slapstick eventually accelerating into a hair-raising sequence on a runaway bus.

Walter Kerr observes that, unlike Chaplin and Keaton, Lloyd had no shadow about him, he seems always equipped for happiness should it come along — so to be interesting, he has to stack the deck against himself and pile on colossal odds against his victory. This pleasing, laid-back romp mainly eschews this until the end, letting us simply watch a guy lead a charmed life, much of the comedy coming from his blithe unawareness of how damned lucky he is.

 

The Sunday Intertitle: Tempest in a Teacup

TEMPEST, a late-silent John Barrymore pic, is a fine reminder of how handsome, dashing and dumb Hollywood pics could be. Without a brain in its head, but with a simply incredible eye, the movie benefits from the double-whammy of James Wong Howe on camera and William Cameron Menzies on production design. Given Menzies’ maximilist interpretation of the designer’s job, it’s likely he sketched out every camera position for director Sam Taylor, a frequent collaborator and good director with no obvious style of his own. In fact, the IMDb lists two additional, uncredited directors, Lewis Milestone, an arch-stylist if ever there was one, and Viktor Tourjansky, another filmmaker of visual genius. It may be that Menzies’s role involved uniting the various approaches under one stylistic banner, as he did with the patchwork of GONE WITH THE WIND.

Boris has the sort of face that appears at windows.

Barrymore plays a dragoon officer, promoted through hard work, but cashiered and imprisoned after falling for a princess (Camilla Horn, from Murnau’s FAUST). An evil toff in a monocle torments Barrymore on one side, while a red revolutionary (the striking Boris de Fast) tempts him from the other. What with the grinning skull-faced commie, and Louis Wolheim’s Sgt Bulba, with his flattened fizzog (like he’s wearing a tight, invisible stocking on his head), it’s a movie of striking physiognomies, crowned by the Great Profile himself.

Among the film’s visual treats, we get a glimpse of the world as it appears to Barrymore.

The movie condemns the hide-bound class system of Tsarist Russia, while deploring the Revolution also, winding up as a piece of propaganda for the American way despite having no American scenes or characters. It’s not subtle, but Barrymore frequently is, avoiding the ham he was sometimes associated with — although he has some fun with his drinking scenes. A recurring tactic has him make some humorous expression in response to an upcoming situation, then play the situation itself quite straight.

Barrymore’s work towards the end of the film is among his best ever, as he has the opportunity to avenge himself upon the woman who ruined him, but finds he still loves her — and that she loves him. On the one hand, the great actor clearly knew this wasn’t Shakespeare, but he invests totally in it: without losing his distinctive wildness, he manages incredible gradations of emotions, and holds sustained closeups which are simply electrifying. Camilla Horn doesn’t match him for nuance, but still makes an effective foil, dialing the histrionics right down and acting as a kind of mirror for Barrymore.

One sequence, where a distraught and imprisoned JB hallucinates images of the war he’s missing (here, I found sympathy a slight strain) and his lady-love/hate — the visions appear as if projected on the prison wall, like the visions in SUNRISE which are seemingly projected on the sky itself — is both pictorially remarkable and rather frightening: Barrymore’s rather convincing incredulous reactions strongly suggest he’s had pertinent experience of hallucinatory torment.

Thumbprint!

The movie ends up a lot like Benjamin Christensen’s MOCKERY, but Barrymore instead of Lon Chaney makes a considerable difference, as does the incredible talent assembled behind the camera: instead of MOCKERY’s smooth MGM professionalism, we get fireworks of sputtering genius.

The whole movie takes place behind a blizzard of fine white scratches, especially at reel changes, and the climax shows obvious signs of missing footage — it plays like a random sampling of final moments, but fortunately we can follow the course of the action OK. It’s frustrating, but not too destructive. The movie is available here ~

Tempest