Too much shouting

I agree. Personally, I find Elizabeth Taylor to be way overrated. Every performance I've seen, her acting leads toward hysteria...exception being A place in the Sun. Her voice is very grating...like nails on a chalkboard.

I think it was the characters. Neither actor was any stranger to the big screen by this point and Newman's character was more subdued and repressed/apathetic the whole movie with occasional bursts of anger (Maggie pointed out him yelling about how she kept making advances and was forgetting the terms they agreed to to stay living together after Skipper's death, which was like two angry sentences, was the first time he'd even raised his voice in months). Big Daddy and Maggie were much more emotive characters and they were angry and fighting so of course they were raising their voices. They weren't the quiet, cold fury type.