Tracking the Sounds of Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew

Tracking the Sounds of Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew

Though Shakespearean drama on the stage is largely an oral, and thus an aural, medium, and although certain film directors of Shakespeare, such as Welles and Kurosawa, are considered master manipulators of cinematic sound, until recently little attention was paid to sound in analyses of Shakespearean films.1 Given the oculocentric culture of America in the last century and the fact that film has traditionally been seen as a largely visual medium, this lack of attention is understandable. For most viewers or spectators (these synonyms for filmgoers suggest the bias), the soundtrack is a mere accompaniment to the images despite the fact that film sound is better than it ever has been by virtue of new digital stereo surround-sound systems in theaters and homes. Moreover, if one opens any college introduction to film, one finds that the obligatory chapter on sound almost without exception follows visual elements like mise-en-scène, cinematography, movement, moving camera, and editing, thereby suggesting its relative (lack of) importance.2 Analyses of sound as a technique are difficult to carry out as well; unlike visual clips, analysts cannot freeze individual sounds on video apparatus nor easily map their mixing and editing.

Of course, when Shakespeareans get around to talking about sound in films of the plays, their focus is usually on the number or percentage of the Bard's lines that have been cut and the way the dialogue is delivered, thereby reflecting the continuing importance of Shakespeare's text (despite recent attempts to destabilize it in textual studies and literary theory) and the primacy of fidelity as a principle in judging adaptations (see Pilkington). For example, jack Jorgens distinguishes music and sound effects from the verse but only gives two pages out of thirty-five to sound in his introductory chapter to Shakespeare on Film (32-33). To be sure, analyses have mentioned a Shakespearean film's musical score (or its absence), discussed it in general terms, or noted its effects in obviously manipulative scenes (for example, Branagh's Non Nobis after Agincourt in Henry the Fifth), but again, only a few scholars have connected sound and music to elements of narrative, image, or character, or assessed the effectiveness in one film of such techniques and properties as sonic motifs, sound effects, volume, pitch, rhythm, and mixing.

Scholarly work on Franco Zeffirelli's 1967 adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew reflects this neglect. From reviewers in 1967 to the latest academic commentators, there are only occasional fragments on dialogue, music, and other sounds, all minor accompaniments to much more expansive treatments of textual cuts and changes, casting, acting, and visual details. For example, the critical tradition generally approves of Nino Rota's music (see Rothwell 131), though its sentimentality has also been noted: "the film is loaded with pleasant but syrupy melodies in the best Hollywood tradition" (Jorgens 70). With regard to the verse, praise for Richard Burton's delivery sits alongside bilious attacks on Elizabeth Taylor's voice and the movie's high volume of noise, especially during farcical episodes. In a narrow-minded and largely disreputable survey of Shakespearean film, prolific movie maven Doughs Brode, for example, deplores Kate's "nasal thin whine of a voice," adding humorously but gratuitously that Taylor's "breasts performed beautifully, but her vocal chords proved disappointing" (23). Discussing the chase scenes, Brode also opines that "Shakespeare's dialogue, or what remains of it, can't be heard over the uproar" (23). This comment reiterates the critique of an early British reviewer named Gerald Kaufman in The Listener (9 March 1967), who contends that after "a couple of reels of this [high-volume soundtrack], the spectator's dearest wish is that, if only for a moment, everyone would stand still and shut up" (qtd. in Haring-Smith 164). Another early reviewer finds fault both with Taylor's "shrill performance" and Burton's decision to pky Petruchio as a loud "drunken peasant," but he counts "verse from Burton" one of the film's successes (Harason 159). As far as serious analysis (as opposed to unsubstantiated opinion) is concerned, Kenriedi Rothwell perceptively points out that two of Rota's musical choices support Shakespeare's '"chiasmus' motif, in which Bianca and Kate gradually exchange roles" (131). Otherwise, the relevance of sound and music to the themes and effects of the film escapes critical attention.

Against this tradition of general critical neglect, evaluative one-liners, and only occasional fragments of serious criticism, I should like to argue that Zeffirelli, with help from Rota and others, artfully structures a complex mix of music, sound, and verbal silence in ways that underscore and even clarify the director's romantic yet progressive interpretation of the pky. While it would be hyperbolic to say that patterns of sound are the key to the film's interpretive insights, Zeffirelli's manipulation of sound often does more than just accompany visual design and dialogue in a simple way. Rather, both diegetic and non-diegetic sound effects and music throughout the film demonstrate the director's attempt to provide a mix of realism and artifice that raises the question of artistic and human illusion, moving viewers to about the same comic distance at which Shakespeare's Induction, excised by Zeffirelli, meta-theatrically places stage audiences. Furthermore, Zeffirelli and Rota create and position a number of musical motifs, greatly varying their volume, rhythm, and tone, to advance the director's view that Kate, under Petruchio's tutelage, overcomes her childish inferiority and the defensive shrewishness that masks it, eventually working with her husband to achieve a marriage of mutual love and equality of wit unusual in such a patriarchal society and apparently sexist pky. The heroine's achievement requires, however, that Petruchio's vulnerability also be clarified for an audience, which Zeffirelli accomplishes in part by inserting patterns of loud and long laughter dearly identified as a public, male mask of bravado for the hero's internal vulnerability, and by presenting moments of verbal silence when facial expression and gesture suggest both deep need and some emotional distress in the mind of the madcap from Verona.