The Taming of the Shrew (1929)
Petruchio marries the fiercely independent Katherina purely for her dowry, then sets about breaking her defiance through a campaign of deprivation and reverse psychology, until her closing speech leaves just enough room to wonder who really won.
The Taming of the Shrew was the only film to pair real-life husband and wife Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and its production coincided with visible strain in their marriage — a subtext later writers have found hard to separate from Katherina and Petruchio’s own battle of wills.
Background
This early sound adaptation of Shakespeare’s play was the only film to pair real-life husband and wife Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, two of the biggest stars of the silent era, as they transitioned into sound pictures. Pickford plays the fiercely independent Katherina, whom Petruchio marries for her dowry and then sets about taming through a campaign of deprivation and psychological pressure, ending with a closing speech that leaves some ambiguity about who has really won the contest of wills.
What to watch for
Watch for how the production coincided with visible strain in Pickford and Fairbanks’s own marriage, a real-life backdrop that later writers and historians have found difficult to separate from the on-screen battle between their characters. As one of the earliest sound adaptations of Shakespeare, it is also worth watching for how the new technology of synchronized dialogue was applied, somewhat awkwardly by later standards, to material originally written for the stage.
