Romeo and Juliet [1968]

I'm watching 50-some odd Shakespeare adaptations this year and then writing about them for My Year of Shakespeare.

Moving on from "Taming...", we're into our Romeo and Juliet unit, to which I must begin with: Welcome back Franco Zeffirelli and your screechingly-overacting character actors of choice.

Summary

For most of this post series, I'm going to try to surmise the plot based solely on the adaptation; I don't have a deep bench with Shakespeare with the possible exception of Romeo & Juliet. As a structuring principle, I'm borrowing the Just King Things five-sentence summary approach.

[1] The Capulet and Montague families have beef; their servants and underlings fight openly in the streets of Verona, both sides escalating. [2] Amidst this, the Capulets host a party where the head of the family's daughter, Juliet, and the head of the Montague's son, Romeo meet and become enamored with each-other and secretly wed. [3] Tybalt, a Capulet, kills Romeo's bestie, Mercutio; in retaliation, Romeo pursues and slays Tybalt. [4] Romeo is exiled; Juliet, in a fit of parents-just-don't-understand, goes to a chemist to fake her death; Romeo returns to Verona to mourn her and drinks poison. [5] Juliet wakes from her chemical slumber, finds Romeo dead, and consequently also drinks poison.

My Thoughts

I went in dreading this one. I last saw this in freshman English class, just after the towers came down, during a brief Shakespeare unit that left the majority of the class confused. Back then, I wasn't really capable of reading a movie; I could get surface level plot understanding but didn't really know how to take it a step further than that. My recollection was the movie was wholly incomprehensible; I am happy to report that is not the movie I watched, which was (in light of being the same director, some of the same actors) fairly easy to follow, with the younger players turning in measured, even candid performances.

Part of what works here for me is, you can be fourteen and watch this, sort of know how the story goes, and experience the whole thing in a very sincere, straight-forward way. Then you can rewatch it twenty-and-change years later as an adult and realize it's very much poking fun at both the concept of a star-crossed love story and the stupidity of the feud as presented. Or maybe I was just fourteen when I watched this the first time.

Does any Romeo and Juliet adaptation end like Burn After Reading? The Prince (now played by JK Simmons) takes stock of the situation and asks aloud "What did we learn here?" and the best answer the head of the Capulets can muster is "don't uh... drink poison?"

Stray Highlights

Olivia Hussey turns in an earnest and, if not realistic, "realist-ish" performance, especially when compared to the adults they have her in scenes with who are doing their best to remind you they're character actors who are majority cockney(?), for some reason. They're all very obnoxious and the younger actors are breaths of fresh air in comparison.

Michael York is downright menacing as Tybalt. Despite the Italian brownface, he turns in a whopper of a performance.

This was filmed on location in Italy; neat!

Next Week

Romeo and Juliet continues with Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet.

• Feb 14: Romeo + Juliet (1996)
• Feb 21: West Side Story (1961) and West Side Story (2021)
• Feb 28: China Girl (1987)

Thank you for reading My Year of Shakespeare. If you have any thoughts, responses, etc, please feel free to write me an email (my email address will show up on the banner if you are signed in).