Kiss Me Kate [1953]

I'm watching 50-some odd Shakespeare adaptations this year and then writing about them for My Year of Shakespeare.

I like to think I'm capable of being a fun person who can enjoy things. Kiss Me Kate doesn't happen to be one of those things, in large part because the plot hinges on on-stage domestic violence that's framed as both comedic and "corrective", which is something I don't really feel qualified to address except to say that it biased me against the fun the movie was trying to have.

"But hey, it's fiction", you may protest. This presents itself as a slightly heightened reality — it's not the ultra-heightened reality of, say, John Wick, or any number of guns-and-explosions movies — which invites its audience to actually place themselves there, to join in the spectacle rather than observe it from a distance. That the moves the characters are making are ideal, and you should do them in your life.

That said, I'm making a conscious effort not to make all of these essays bare polemics; just know that going in, this one was extremely of-its-time with gender relations and a modern audience may find that troubling.

Summary

For most of this post series, I'm going to try to surmise the plot based solely on the adaptation; I don't have a deep bench with Shakespeare with the possible exception of Romeo & Juliet. As a structuring principle, I'm borrowing the Just King Things five-sentence summary approach.

[1] Cole Porter, fictional character, is staging a musical of The Taming of the Shrew starring Fred Graham (played by Howard Keel) and his ex-wife Lilli (played by Kathryn Grayson) in the Petruchio and Katherine roles, respectively; the actress playing Bianca, Lois (played by Ann Miller), has a deadbeat boyfriend playing Lucentio who has a gambling problem and signed Fred's name to an IOU for two grand. [2] Lilli mistakenly gets flowers Fred sent to Lois and realizes it on-stage, going off-script to needle and barb him, causing him to actually hit her on-stage before the diagetic intermission*; She readies herself to quit and leave the play. [3] Meanwhile, mob goons show up to collect on the IOU in Fred's dressing room; using some quick thinking, Fred delays the goons, saying if they can prevent Lilli from leaving til the end of the week, he can pay them with the proceeds from the play. [4] Lilli, threatened and cowed into staying, changes her tune and it turns out she loves Fred and actually has the whole time. [5] Offscreen, the person Fred owes the IOU to is assassinated by a rival gang and the debt is waived.

*not to be confused with the actual intermission, which this movie has.

My Thoughts

I'm beginning to think the adaptational choices aren't the issue I'm having with "The Taming of the Shrew". Adding a metafictional framework that is also an adaptation of the play is a neat trick 1953's Kiss Me Kate pulls off, but the story remains "How terrible can these two (or more) awful people be to each other until they like each other?". It really feels like the diametric opposite of a plot I'm more accustomed to: the hedgehog's dilemma.

Plot-wise, I loved the expedience the IOU was dispatched with via an off-screen but audible hail of gunfire. "To smithereens, you say?" is really nothing new.

An idea I'm still ruminating on is the prevalence of tap here - I don't know what the sort of cultural penetration of tap dancing was (were there local tap organizations that put on shows? was that a thing you could be "locally known" for?) but it almost feels like that is supposed to be an apparatus of audience participation or fandom, that you, too, could tap dance like Bob Fosse or Ann Miller. Cha cha cha. That's sort of fascinating to think about, an audience that can't be trusted to "be in" the fiction versus an audience that is assumed "bought in" to the world/artifice. I suppose the latter is a fairly new phenomenon with the emergence of worldbuilding and what have you, but that it always hasn't been like this feels comforting to know.

Stray Highlights

"That's her ring" Fred says as Lilli just leans on the apartment buzzer, not letting up in any way; Lois as well. If only we all had the gall to be so obnoxious. You'll know I'm following you when I lay on the horn and only let up because I need a hand free to flip someone off.

I find it strange that they cast someone to play a fictionalized version of Cole Porter; surely his profile was sufficiently high (and the requirements of the role so shallow) that they could just get him. If you have any insight into what prevented this, please feel free to write in.

I did really enjoy the punchiness and rhythm of Porter's dialogue; likewise, Ann Miller was an unexpected delight. I can see why she was parodied by Molly Shannon well beyond her prime.

I found the mob goons taking part in the play charming.

The cut of this I watched wasn't in 3-D (or, if it was included, I wasn't able to figure out how to enable it); Much of the dancing seemed very well-choreographed for 3-D, to say nothing of the "throwing things directly at the camera" POV shots.

Next Week

I'm watching 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). Thank you for reading My Year of Shakespeare. If you have any thoughts, responses, etc, please feel free to write me an email (my email address will show up on the banner if you are signed in).

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