initiated by TrueMagic on September 15, 2008 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000770/)
This is worth seeing as a solid early effort to film Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew", and it is also of interest as an early pairing of director D.W. Griffith and cinematographer Billy Bitzer. Although it now looks like a relatively unfinished attempt, for its time it is a creditable adaptation.It's not surprising that the slapstick sequences work better than the rest of the story, since they more
This is worth seeing as a solid early effort to film Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew", and it is also of interest as an early pairing of director D.W. Griffith and cinematographer Billy Bitzer. Although it now looks like a relatively unfinished attempt, for its time it is a creditable adaptation.It's not surprising that the slapstick sequences work better than the rest of the story, since they do not rely very much on explanation or dialogue. Its other noticeable strength is the sets, which have a fair amount of detail for the time. Bitzer's photography usually catches the setting and the action well.Some of the story developments and relationships among the characters are not fully explained, so either some inter-titles have been lost, or else it was assumed that the audience could fill in the details from being familiar with the story.Certainly, audiences of the time could have enjoyed the comedy portions with only a passing memory of the plot. While the comic sequences themselves would not hold up against the later Keystone comedies or other such features of the mid-1910s, for 1908 they work well enough.
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