|
The Taming of the Shrew on Bavarian slopes, played by Ernst Lubitsch like a swift quadrille. The village innkeeper (Jakob Tiedtke) has two contrasting daughters, both are embodied by Henny Porten in a rigorous stroke in due time reversed by Buñuel. The younger one is too dainty to smash a piggy bank, and vain enough to be stung when her new faux-gold brooch goes unnoticed by passersby. "Young people have no sense of fashion at all!" The older one uses her hands to wipe the foam off beer mugs but rolls up her sleeves before throwing out sloshed customers, a mulish backward kick is her response to their jeers. "Ladies' choice" on dance night, the wanderer (Emil Jannings) spins with the maiden across the ballroom floor and immediately proposes, father won't allow it until her sister has a man of her own. The chum up the tree (Gustav von Wangenheim) has an idea: Marry the truculent ox himself, "as soon as she gets to know you, she'll sue for divorce." The refined mathematics of romantic comedy, where lovers lost in an embrace are brought back to earth with a snowball to the face. The proposal is met with a slap and a stamp ("When you love a girl with all your heart, you will gladly bear any pain"), the wedding procession like a funeral is remembered by Vigo in L'Atalante. The husband's reign of terror has the opposite effect, it all ends with a guffaw and the taste of a kiss on the lips. A distant echo or two turn up in Russell's Women in Love. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |