Romeo and Juliet.

For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
The story of star-crossed lovers by Shakespeare wakes a
unceasing interest not only in playwrights, but also in screen-writers
and consequently in film-makers of all times. But, speaking of the
classics, it is forsooth not the same Shakespeare. As Romeo is
crying having slain Tybalt: O, I am Fortune's fool, so are we, the
viewers of a new Shakespeare. The two versions of apparently the
same tragedy of Juliet and her Romeo are not of the same kind,
though both of them have cut quite a part of the original, but they
did it using absolutely different means.
Eye-pleasing, passionate and mild Italian version by Franco
Zeffirelli (1968) is balanced in terms of shooting. Notwithstanding
the fact that it is made in a more traditional way than that of an
Australian director Baz Lurmann, Zeffirelli executes his proper
Romeo and Juliet. The film opens with the scene on the market on
the main square, where the men of two households in feud appear
and there they are displayed in other scenes as well, though the
fighting between Romeo and Tybalt involves more space. Thanks to
Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey starred Romeo and Juliet, who
were not much older than their characters show so much naturallyforced passion, love and purity at the same time, that they
definitely outstand the two clans they represent. Whereas the
spectator is plunged into the incomprehensible feud of the Capulets
and the Montagues, young lovers are relishing the moments of their
first sincere love. To a modern audience, it has nothing to do with
shame as nudity of the actors in the morning scene after
consummation of the marriage. But don't we have the primarily
written text of Shakespeare which gives the clues to understanding
of what is laying underneath the superficial meaning?
To my way of thinking, the casting in this version is really
magnificent since it reflects the understanding of the Bard's text.
Absolutely moving and comic Nurse of Pat Heywood is an
incarnation of caring and loving mother, but who makes too much
fuss about her ward. In this sense even the dressing speaks a lot for
the character, especially in this scene on the square when she
comes to speak to Romeo, where her puffy garment becomes the
object of Mercutio's mockery. And later on there comes the funniest
moment when she takes Romeo and dandles him in joy. Whilst in
the version by Baz Lurmann (Romeo+Juliet, 1996) the image of
Nurse doesn't occupy so much space in the whole picture, although

Miriam Margolyes adds more courageous and even daring nature of

hers. And even if she is not the one who gives Juliet a remedy, but
she is definitely the one who consoles her. What is curious about
the Lurmann's production is that renaming the characters and
introducing some that were not present in the play (as that of
narrator-news anchor, whereas in Zeffirelli's film the role of the
narrator is presented through the off-screen commentary).
The lovers reciting the verses be it the balcony scene or in the
cryptal one don't sound feigned, and thus a viewer believe them,
paying tribute to their flourishing youth and beauty. There is also a
nuptial scene which is one of the most wonderfully shot: Juliet in
violet coming to the altar, friar holding the Holy Book and lilies on
the floor all these symbols put together executes the picture of
the Annunciation. And I suppose, it's not by chance implied by the
director, as it also gives some grounds to consider Juliet as an
earthly angel. Moreover, it isn't the only biblical allusion that we
could find in the film, we can remember the ass on the back of
which the letter for Romeo should have come to Mantua, reminding
an attentive viewer of Jesus entering the gates of Jerusalem. A nice
work done by Zeffirelli to develop and make obvious the motifs
Shakespeare himself just touched upon. Thus, for instance the
loving nature of Romeo relations with Benvolio and Mercutio are
shown that way that no one would doubt it. In Lurmann's film I
think, it is so not because the Bard himself wanted to make a focus
on something obscene, obscene it was not; I'd rather consider it to
be natural forces uniting people, because great power has
friendship or camaraderie, but greater power has a medley of it
with love and true affection. Besides, we can observe with the help
of tracking shot genuine jealousy of Tybalt which is quite clear in
the ball scene in the house of Capulets. And Michael York as Tybalt
plays his part accurately; he outrages on the Montague family and
its allies but he is a devoted brother, though we don't have a lot of
scenes where to see it to a full extent. And would be all right to try
the same thing in Romeo+Juliet, but Lurmann refuses from casting
ordinary characters, making Mercutio a drag queen whom we as
viewers do not pity much when he visits the houses of feuding
families with plagues.
To a great extent, this film preserves the symbolic essence of
Shakespearean tragedy. First, Danilo Donati made a considerable
contribution to the Bard in choosing the colors for the costumes (it's
not by chance this film won Oscar for costumes design). Second,
Nino Rota and Eugene Walter formed the audience's impression of
the film by introducing music which happens to reflect the changing

state of the characters, though there is not much of it. Third, the
composition of the film was aimed to imply the theatrical sphere
into it by implementation of a break between the two parts of the
action Intermission which, accompanied by the image of sun, is
a foreshadowing in the two possible senses: as an intermission in
the theatre it prepares a spectator to face the climax of the play
and, secondly, as the sign of something bad to happen in the lives
of Romeo and Juliet due to the image of the close-up sun. As if it
were false sun rays that lead to blinding of people: bright ideas
that have come into the head of friar Laurence, but then turning to
be the cause of the tragedy due to blinding of Romeo who rushes to
his dead beauty from Mantua; of Balthasar who believes his eyes
not daring to ask the friar; blinding of friar Laurence who doesn't
insist on Juliet's leaving the crypt and thus rescuing her from the
death.
Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet is tender, rather classical
and tear-jerking, but at the same time rich in new fairly seditious
insertions. It's not a surprising fact that by now it is yet considered
to be among the most loved and favoured film production of
Shakespeare ever been shot.
Personally, I don't find a lot in favour of Baz Lurmann's
Romeo+Juliet, though I cannot say that I am not a Tory myself, but I
think that interpreting the classics that way is more a destruction
than a creation. The retro-futuristic style of it, as it is called, would
suit better some gangster or action film, though the purpose of it is
quite clear: while in the version of 1968 the focus was made on the
essence of love, here it is more about violence and bloody outrage
of the feuding families and utmost hatred between them. It is in the
air of the society Lurmann himself is sent to live in and this is the
same source he draws from. He has picked up the most typical and,
perhaps, eternal motifs of the history of the world and lays his cards
down by a series of close-ups and mise-en-scenes. As in the first
cinematic interpretation of the play of Shakespeare the couple of
young lovers are the emblematic one which is to oppose the harsh
reality of Verona Beach (I'd better say that retro in the definition of
style of the film might mean not coming back to the past but
turning the past upside-down, adapting it to the modern world of
Latino mafia and two business empires).
The most touching moment of the film is that of the first
encounter of Romeo with Juliet, being dressed in this masquerade in
the house of the Capulets as a bright angel, and Claire Danes
sees her role of chaste girl from an outer world through well.
Lurmann is a playful director, and being one, he converts swords

and rapiers into the guns where the inscription says that it is a
sword (that of Benvolio), dagger (Mercutio) or rapier (Tybalt). So, it
doesn't amaze you much when you recognizes the quotations taken
from Shakespeare used as advertisements (Add more fuel to your
fire on the gas station taken from Henry VI, part III) or when
Romeo takes ecstasy after Mercutio's soliloquy on queen Mab (when
he is in the house of the Capulets and gets sick of it he remarks:
The drug is fast which can be seen as a foreshadowing of his
death poisoning himself). Also one of the crucial moments has to do
with the image of
father Laurence(a charismatic Pete
Postlethwaite), especially the first scene he is introduced into while
giving the children a life-worth lesson: that one and the same thing
can be a remedy as much as a poison if treated unskillfully. What
also attracts the eye of the viewer is the speedy camera shots to
make a collage of dreams, or flashbacks and sometimes
foreshadowing, when the scenes are repeated but is staged from
the different angle (as, for example, the dream of Romeo he wakes
up from in the morning on seeing the death of Tybalt for the second
time. Now, as a dream.)
And although Baz Lurmann might have had some good ideas
how to read Shakespeare translated into cinematographic language,
shooting it as a blockbuster with two rival mafioso clans with a little
space left for love which feels unfit and dies. Really, such kinds of
films are less harmful to the viewer when watched without even
knowing who was Juliet and her Romeo and why it is a story of
woe and not of stupidity of human beings.
Bibliography
Coville, Bruce. William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. NY. Penguin
Putnam. 1999.
Romeo + Juliet. Dir. Baz Luhrmann. Perf. Leonardo DiCaprio and
Claire Danes. DVD. Twentieth-Century Fox, 1996.
Romeo and Juliet. Dir.Franko Zeffirelli. Perf. Leonard Whiting and
Olivia Hussey. DVD. Paramount Pictures, 1968
Shakespeare, William. The Shakespeare Collection: Romeo and
Juliet. USA. Oxford University Press. 2002
The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy. Edited by
Claire McEachern. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Illus. pp. viii, 274