What to expect
Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks bring star marriage and new sound technology to Shakespeare. Their celebrity chemistry makes the central struggle vivid while intensifying the play’s troubling gender politics.
How to ease in
The film treats conflict as courtship, but you need not accept that equation. Watch how Katherina and Petruchio perform for servants, relatives, and each other, and where comedy depends on coercion.
Heads-up
Petruchio courts Katherina through a contest of authority, performance, and humiliation in an early sound Shakespeare adaptation.
The stars make resistance pleasurable even when the story tries to call submission an ending. I watch Katherina’s performance for signs that the last word and the last meaning may not be the same thing.
Open the note ↓
The stars make resistance pleasurable even when the story tries to call submission an ending. I watch Katherina’s performance for signs that the last word and the last meaning may not be the same thing.
— Momo
Credits & versions
Version map
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