The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 19.0372 Sunday, 29 June 2008
From: Hardy M. Cook <
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Date: Sunday, June 29, 2008
Subject: This Week's Moviemaker Shakespeare on Film Tribute
With Romeo and Juliet, Franco Zeffirelli interprets the language of young love
in MM's fifth week of Shakespeare on Film.
by Daniel Rosenthal
http://www.moviemaker.com/acting/article/shakespeare_on_film_romeo_and_juliet_20080626/
Romeo and Juliet (1968)
directed by Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli sowed the seeds of this box office triumph in 1960, when the
Italian director-designer made his Shakespeare stage debut with Romeo and Juliet
at London's Old Vic. In 1967, he set out to replicate that Old Vic passion on
film, immediately after his success with The Taming of the Shrew. He was
confident of attracting a large international audience and, believing that "the
kids in the story are like teenagers today," took a gamble by casting actors
almost as young as their characters: Leonard Whiting was 17, Olivia Hussey,
chosen ahead of 350 other hopefuls, just 15.
Emulating Renato Castellani's 1954 precedent, Zeffirelli spent much of the
three-month shoot at Italian locations: Small towns in Tuscany and Umbria, with
some interiors recreated at Cinecitta Studios in Rome. Shakespeare's action
unfolds in medieval churches, sun-drenched piazzas and shady side streets filled
with handsome, athletic boys in color-coded tights and codpieces (garish red and
yellow for Capulets, discreet blue for Montagues).
From the opening, frenzied brawl to the final procession of Capulet and
Montague mourners, the whole film, as Richard Burton said to Zeffirelli after
seeing some early footage, "looks sensational." Yet Burton also cautioned:
"You've got problems with the verse," and Whiting and Hussey were the chief
culprits.
Their youth makes the lovers' infatuation more credible than in George Cukor;
their beauty is beyond question (the nudity in the wedding night scene caused a
minor stir), and every intimate moment is underscored by Nino Rota's soaring
love theme (later to become a hit record). Yet their struggle to convey the
meaning of the language is painful to behold, even though Zeffirelli had cut
more than half the text. Hussey fares marginally better of the two, her face
conveying memorable dread as the story spirals towards her suicide. Whiting's
London-accented Romeo remains more love-struck wimp than desperate, fate-driven
hero, an impression reinforced because Zeffirelli (unlike Cukor and Castellani)
does not jeopardize audience sympathy by showing Romeo killing Paris.
[ . . . ]
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