#1171: ZEFFIRELLI, Franco: Romeo and Juliet (1968)

ZEFFIRELLI, Franco (Italy)
Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Spine #1171

Blu-ray

One of the great Shakespeare adaptations, this sublime take on the Bard’s immortal romantic tragedy by Franco Zeffirelli breathed new life into the oft-told tale by casting actual teenagers in the title roles. As the young lovers whose affair threatens to inflame the tensions between their feuding families in Renaissance Verona, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting vividly capture the mix of adolescent ardor and turmoil that fuels their destiny-driven liaison. A sensory banquet thanks to Nino Rota’s delicate score and the exquisite, Oscar-winning costumes and cinematography, Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare at its most deeply felt and passionately alive.

138 minutes
Color
Monaural
1:85:1
Criterion Release 2023

Director/Writers

Based upon the play by William Shakespeare.
Screenplay by Franco Brusati, Masolino D'Amico, and Franco Zeffirelli.
Zeffirelli was 45 when he directed Romeo and Juliet.

The Film

Olivia Hussey (Juliet) was 14; Leonard Whiting (Romeo) was 16. Zeffirelli molded their looks and inexperience into something truly magical. During an age when television was pushing cinema to the side, it’s amazing that Paramount took a chance on Shakespeare — but it paid off; the film was a huge success.

The great Milo O’Shea was Friar Laurence; Michael York was Tybalt; Bruce Robinson was Benvolio — before becoming a director [Withnail & I (1987) and How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1988)].

The film swarms with action and passion. Robert Wise (1961) and Spielberg (2021) both took their Tony/Maria cues in West Side Story from Zeffirelli’s perfect sense of timing at the moment when the young lovers first lock eyes at the dance.

The great DP — Pasqualino De Santis — shaped the look of the film, toggling between tight and long shots and subtle lighting effects.

Nino Rota’s score was one of his best.

Film Rating (0-60):

56

The Extras

The Booklet

Twelve-page wraparound featuring an essay by scholar Ramona Wray.

“Romeo and Juliet begins with a composition that testifies to Zeffirelli’s love of visual splendor. The leisurely crane shot of a period cityscape of Verona, beneath a dissipating fog, echoes a similar camera trajectory at the start of Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1944). And it is the voice of an uncredited Olivier that we hear at the outset of Romeo and Juliet, delivering the play’s famous prologue (“Two households, both alike in dignity”) — and indicating the film’s intention to insert itself into the tradition of Shakespearean cinema. At the same time, Zeffirelli makes manifest his signature style. The mist anticipates the use of diaphanous fabrics later in the film, including the muslin drapes that adorn corpses in the crypt where the tragedy’s climax takes place. A symbol of passion, the emerging sun intimates a dialectic of love and hate, the opposing forces that drive the story.”

Commentary

None.

Excerpt

From the 2018 documentary Franco Zeffirelli: Directing from Life.

Short excerpt.

Interviews

With actors Hussey and Whiting from 1967 and 2016.

The 2016 interviews are delightful reminiscences. You can tell they’ve remained friends after all these years.

The ‘67 interviews were made right after the film wrapped. The British interviewer asks insipid questions, wondering why the 14-year-old Hussey smokes. Don’t your parents disapprove?

“Well, my mom told me to stop, but I said I’d just keep doing it behind her back.” Oh, the Summer of Love!

Trailer

They made good trailers in those days.

Extras Rating (0-40):

35

56 + 35 =

91

By Director
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