ROMEO AND JULIET
A film review by Shane R. Burridge
Copyright 1997 Shane R. Burridge
Romeo and Juliet (1968) 138m.
A beautiful adaptation of Shakespeare that has a place in many moviegoers' hearts. While I love Bernstein's musical version WEST SIDE STORY, and enoy the flippant, shrieking, MTV-style 1996 update, there is still no substitute for this Franco Zeffirelli gem. Shakespeare's classic love story doesn't fit the modern-dress scenario as well as his tragedies or history lessons, no matter how timeless or relevant his themes may be: the notion of romance is too strongly intertwined with sentiment, innocence and longing - qualities we associate with an irretrievable past - to make the transition successfully. So while the contemporary setting of 1996's ROMEO + JULIET makes for great cinema, its own flashiness ultimately denies it emotional resonance: it presents Romeo and Juliet's world as so superficial, violent, and cheerless that you can't blame them for wanting to leave it. Their death scene is no tragedy, merely an exit. Zeffirelli's renaissance Italy, on the other hand, is a place any of us could be perfectly happy to spend our lives in.
It's hard to imagine a more definitive version of the play - this film is how Shakespeare himself would have envisaged it, a world of sundrenched piazzas, masked balls, rowdy swordsmanship, bustling marketplaces, moonlight, meadows, and passion. But most importantly, teenagers were finally trusted with the roles of the two lovers - I cringe at those adult `Hollywood' actors strutting across the stage and going through all the motions in earlier film versions, because more than anything Romeo and Juliet are two hormonally-charged *adolescents* who are swept away not only by each other, but by the mere idea of being in love. Leonard Whiting is a naive, impulsive Romeo; Olivia Hussey is the girlfriend of every boy's dreams - voluptuous, spirited, and stunningly beautiful. Together they represent everyone who ever wanted to rebel against the dogmatism of their parents and improve the way of the world. This was surely a message that the Woodstock generation took personally - these two youthful, optimistic heroes were seen to endorse their views on peace, freedom, sex, and love. Subsequently Whiting and Hussey became minor icons of the late sixties.
Zeffirelli's eye for detail presents us with an entirely believable milieu - all his characters seem so real and natural it's easy to forget they're speaking Shakespeare. Every moment Whiting and Hussey are together on screen they are completely alive - you'll know what all-consuming love is, just as you'll sympathise with them every moment they are apart. Final scenes are among the cinema's most heartbreaking - even after three cinema screenings they still make me choke up. Nino Rota's well-known and popular score contributes enormously. Film won Oscars for cinematography and costumes. Also with: Pat Heywood as a robust nurse and Michael York as a cocky, pugnacious Tybalt - one of the reasons I couldn't take the 1996 version seriously was because Tybalt reminded me of a kind of Ferris Bueller from Hell.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews