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Zeffirelli, born in Florence in 1923, came early to the English language through prewar experiences hinted at in the loosely autobiographical " Tea With Mussolini" (1999). "This of all works of literature eternizes the ardor of young love and youth's aggressive spirit," wrote Anthony Burgess.
Tromeo and juliet full movie#
The movie opened in the tumultuous year of 1968, a time of political upheaval around the world, and somehow the story of the star-crossed lovers caught the mood of rebellious young people who had wearied of their elders' wars. It did, beyond any precedent for a film based on Shakespeare, even though Shakespeare is the most filmed writer in history. At dawn, drinking strong coffee as cars pulled around to take his actors back to Rome, Zeffirelli said what was obvious: That the whole movie depended on the balcony and the crypt scenes, and he felt now that his casting decision had proven itself, and that the film would succeed. Pasqualino De Santis, who was to win an Oscar for his cinematography, directed his crew quietly, urgently, trying to be ready for the freshness of the actors instead of making them wait for technical quibbles. (Whiting, balanced in a tree, needed to watch his footing.)īetween shots, in the overgrown garden, Zeffirelli strolled with the composer Nino Rota, who had written the music for most of Fellini's films and now simply hummed the film's central theme, as the director nodded. And when the balcony scene was shot, I remember the heedless energy that Hussey threw into it, take after take, hurling herself almost off the balcony for hungry kisses. I remember Hussey and Whiting upstairs in the old hillside villa, waiting for their call, unaffected, uncomplicated. It was my good fortune to visit the film set, in a small hill town an hour or so outside Rome, on the night when the balcony scene was filmed. Another year or two of experience, perhaps, and they would have been too intimidated to play the roles. Hussey and Whiting were so good because they didn't know any better. And there is time, too, for many of the great speeches, including Mercutio's poetic evocation of Mab, the queen of dreams.
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What is left is what people love the play for-the purity of the young lovers' passion, the earthiness of Juliet's nurse, the well-intentioned plans of Friar Laurence, the hot-blooded feud between the young men of the families, the cruel irony of the double deaths. Shakespeare, who took such wholesale liberties with his own sources, might have understood. He was roundly criticized for his edits, but much that needs describing on the stage can simply be shown onscreen, as when Benvolio is shown witnessing Juliet's funeral and thus does not need to evoke it in a description to the exiled Romeo. They didn't merely look their parts, they embodied them in the freshness of their personalities, and although neither was a trained actor, they were fully equal to Shakespeare's dialogue for them Anthony Holden's new book William Shakespeare: The Man Behind the Genius contrasts "the beautiful simplicity with which the lovers speak at their moments of uncomplicated happiness," with "the ornate rhetorical flourishes which fuel so much else in the play"-flourishes that Zeffirelli severely pruned, trimming about half the play.
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This is first love for Juliet, and Romeo's crush on the unseen Rosalind is forgotten the moment he sees Juliet at the masked ball: "I ne'er saw true beauty until this night." After a well-publicized international search, Zeffirelli cast Olivia Hussey, a 16-year-old from Argentina, and Leonard Whiting, a British 17-year-old. As the play opens, Juliet "hath not seen the change of 14 years," and Romeo is little older. His crucial decision, in a film where almost everything went well, was to cast actors who were about the right age to play the characters (as Howard and Shearer were obviously not). But the favorite film version is likely to remain, for many years, Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 production. "Romeo and Juliet" has been filmed many times in many ways Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard starred in the beloved 1936 Hollywood version, and modern transformations include Robert Wise's " West Side Story" (1961), which applies the plot to Manhattan gang warfare Abel Ferrara's "China Girl" (1987), about a forbidden romance between a girl of Chinatown and a boy of Little Italy, and Baz Luhrmann's " Romeo + Juliet" (1996), with California punk gangs on Verona Beach.