William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet may be one of the most-screened plays of all time. The most notable theatrical releases were George Cukor's multi-Oscar-nominated 1936 production Romeo and Juliet, Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 film Romeo and Juliet, and Baz Luhrmann's 1996 MTV-inspired Romeo + Juliet. The latter two were both, at the time, the highest-grossing Shakespeare films. Cukor featured the mature actors Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard as the teenage lovers while Zeffirelli populated his film with beautiful young people, and Baz Luhrmann produced a heavily cut fast-paced version aimed at teenage audiences.Orgel, Stephen "Shakespeare Illustrated" in Shaughnessy, Robert (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture" (Cambridge University Press, 2007, ) p.91
Several reworkings of the story have also been filmed, most notably West Side Story, Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet and Romanoff and Juliet. Several theatrical films, such as Shakespeare in Love and Romeo Must Die, consciously use elements of Shakespeare's plot.
Significant feature releases
George Cukor / MGM (1936)
Producer Irving Thalberg pushed MGM for five years to make a Romeo and Juliet, in the face of the studio's opposition: which stemmed from Louis B. Mayer's belief that the masses considered the Bard over their heads, and from the austerity forced on the studios by the Depression. It was only when Jack L. Warner announced his intention to film Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream that Mayer, not to be outdone, gave Thalberg the go-ahead.Brode, Douglas "Shakespeare in the Movies: From the Silent Era to Today" (2001, Berkeley Boulevard, New York, ) p.43 Thalberg's stated intention was "to make the production what Shakespeare would have wanted had he possessed the facilities of cinema."Thalberg, Irving - quoted by Brode, p.44 He went to great lengths to establish authenticity and the film's intellectual credentials: researchers were sent to Verona to take photographs for the designers; the paintings of Botticelli, Bellini, Carpaccio and Gozzoli were studied to provide visual inspiration; and two academic advisers (John Tucker Murray of Harvard and William Strunk, Jr. of Cornell) were flown to the set, with instructions to criticise the production freely.Brode, p.44 The film includes two songs drawn from other plays by Shakespeare: "Come Away Death" from Twelfth Night and "Honour, Riches, Marriage, Blessing" from The Tempest.Tatspaugh, Patricia "The Tragedy of Love on Film" in Jackson, Russell "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film" (Cambridge University Press, 2000, ) p.137 Thalberg had only one choice for director: George Cukor, who was known as "the women's director". Thalberg's vision was that the performance of Norma Shearer, his wife, would dominate the picture.
Scholar Stephen Orgel describes Cukor's film as "largely miscast ... with a preposterously mature pair of lovers in Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer, and an elderly John Barrymore as a stagey Mercutio decades out of date."Orgel, p.91 Barrymore was in his late fifties, and played Mercutio as a flirtatious tease.Tatspaugh, p.138 Romeo wears gloves in the balcony scene, and Juliet has a pet fawn.Tatspaugh, p.136 Tybalt is usually portrayed as a hot-headed troublemaker, but Basil Rathbone played him as stuffy and pompous.Brode, p.47
Thalberg cast screen actors, rather than stage actors, but shipped-in East Coast drama coaches (such as the acclaimed Frances Robinson Duff to coach Norma Shearer - who had never acted on stage) with the unfortunate consequence that actors previously adored for their naturalism gave what are now considered stilted performances. The shoot extended to six months, and the budget reached $2 million, making it MGM's most expensive film since the 1925 silent Ben-Hur.Brode, p.45
Like most Shakespearean filmmakers, Cukor and his screenwriter Talbot Jennings cut much of the original script: playing around 45% of it.Tatspaugh, p.137 Many of these cuts are common ones in the theatre, such as the second appearance of the chorusRomeo and Juliet II.0.1-14 and the comic scene of Peter with the musicians.Romeo and Juliet IV.v.96-141 Others are filmic: designed to replace words with action, or rearranging scenes in order to introduce groups of characters in longer narrative sequences. However, Jennings retains more of Shakespeare's poetry for the young lovers than any of his big-screen successors. Several scenes are interpolated, including three sequences featuring Friar John in Mantua. In contrast, the role of Friar Laurence (an important character in the play) is much reduced.Brode, p.46 A number of scenes are expanded as opportunities for visual spectacle, including the opening brawl (set against the backdrop of a religious procession), the wedding and Juliet's funeral. The party scene,Romeo and Juliet I.v choreographed by Agnes de Mille, includes Rosaline (an unseen character in Shakespeare's script) who rebuffs Romeo. The role of Peter is enlarged, and played by Andy Devine as a faint-hearted bully. He speaks lines which Shakespeare gave to other Capulet servants, making him the instigator of the opening brawl.Romeo and Juliet I.i
Clusters of images are used to define the central characters: Romeo is first sighted leaning against a ruined building in an arcadian scene, complete with a pipe-playing shepherd and his sheepdog; the livelier Juliet is associated with Capulet's formal garden, with its decorative fish pond.
Neither critics nor the public responded enthusiastically, although Robert Osborne has stated that the film was a success when he hosted a telecast of it on Turner Classic Movies. Graham Greene wrote that he was "less than ever convinced that there is an aesthetic justification for filming Shakespeare at all... the effect of even the best scenes is to distract."Greene, Graham reviewing George Cukor's 1936 Romeo and Juliet in The Spectator. Extracted from Greene, Graham and Taylor, John Russell (ed.) "The Pleasure Dome. Collected Film Criticism 1935-40" (Oxford, 1980) cited by Jackson, Russell "From Play-Script to Screenplay" in Jackson, Russell (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film (15-34) at p.21 Cinemagoers considered the film too "arty", staying away as they had from Warner's A Midsummer Night Dream a year before: leading to Hollywood abandoning the Bard for over a decade.Brode, p.48 The film nevertheless received four Oscar nominations. Subsequent film versions would make use of less experienced, but more photogenic, actors in the central roles. Cukor, interviewed in 1970, said of his film: "It's one picture that if I had to do over again, I'd know how. I'd get the garlic and the Mediterranean into it."Tatspaugh, p.136, citing George Cukor. A fuller version of the quotation, used here, appears in Rosenthal, Daniel "BFI Screen Guides: 100 Shakespeare Films" (British Film Institute, London, 2007, ) p.209 (Note that these sources conflict on the date of this interview: Rosenthal says 1971.)
Franco Zeffirelli (1968)
Stephen Orgel describes Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet as being "full of beautiful young people, and the camera, and the lush Technicolor, make the most of their sexual energy and good looks." Sarah Munson Deats – referring to recent opposition to the Vietnam War – says that the film was "particularly intended to attract the counter-culture youth, a generation of young people, like Romeo and Juliet, estranged from their parents, torn by the conflict between their youthful cult of passion and the military tradition of their elders.", cited by Tatspaugh, p. 140 Filming at the time of the "British Invasion", Zeffirelli was able to use an English cast to appeal to American audiences.Brode, p. 51 Zeffirelli said of his film:
In truth, Zeffirelli's young leads were already experienced actors: Leonard Whiting (then 16) had been the youngest member of the National Theatre and had played The Artful Dodger in Oliver! on stage. Olivia Hussey (aged 15) had studied for four years at the Italia Conti Drama School and had starred opposite Vanessa Redgrave in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in the West End.Brode, pp. 51–2; Rosenthal, p. 218.
Zeffirelli filmed his Romeo and Juliet shortly after completing work on his 1967 film The Taming of the Shrew and had learned from his experience on that project that it was better not to include speeches made redundant by his vivid images.Brode, p. 52 He played around 35% of Shakespeare's script, enhancing the focus on the two central characters and making them more sympathetic, while simplifying their roles to make them less tricky for his young leads to play.Tatspaugh, p. 141 He tellingly juxtaposes the betrothal of Juliet and Paris with the Capulets' crumbling marriage. Yet the film is often noted for its zest for life and for love: the former epitomised by John McEnery's Mercutio, the latter by Leonard Whiting's Romeo. In contrast to Renato Castellani's 1954 version, Zeffirelli highlighted Romeo's positive relationships with the Friar, Balthazar and Mercutio. The way in which Mercutio physically collapses onto Romeo after the Queen Mab speech, and again when mortally wounded, has been credited with introducing homosexual overtones into the public perception of their relationship.
Zeffirelli's handling of the duel scene has been particularly praised,For example, by Anthony West of Vogue and Mollie Panter-Downes of The New Yorker, cited by Brode, pp. 52–53 and his device later adopted by Baz Luhrmann. Taking his cue from Benvolio's speech ending "For now these hot days is the mad blood stirring"Romeo and Juliet III.i.1–4. Zeffirelli depicts the dry, oppressive heat of the little town where (in Anthony West's words) "men seek to kill each other to relieve their exasperation at having nothing better to do".Anthony West in Vogue, cited by Brode, p.53 The duel is presented as bravado getting out-of-control: the youths baiting one another, half-teasingly. Critic Robert Hatch described Tybalt and Mercutio as "a couple of neighborhood warlords, vaunting their courage with grandstand high jinks, trying for a victory by humiliation, and giving no strong impression of a taste to kill."Robert Hatch in The Nation, cited by Brode, p.53 The scene increases sympathy for Michael York's Tybalt (often played as a bloodthirsty bully on the stage) by making him shocked and guilty at the lethal wound he has inflicted.Brode, p.53
Like most screen directors of the play, Zeffirelli cut the duel with Paris,Romeo and Juliet V.iii.49-73 which helps to keep Romeo sympathetic to the audience.Brode, pp.54–55
A particular difficulty for any screenwriter arises towards the end of the fourth act, where Shakespeare's play requires considerable compression to be effective on the big screen, without giving the impression of "cutting to the chase".Jackson, Russell "From play-script to screenplay" in Jackson, Russell "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film" (Cambridge University Press, 2000, ) p.30 In Zeffirelli's version, Juliet's return home from the Friar's cell, her submission to her father and the preparation for the wedding are drastically abbreviated, and the tomb scene is also cut short: Paris does not appear at all, and Benvolio (in the Balthazar role) is sent away but is not threatened.Jackson, p.30
The film courted controversy by including a nude wedding-night sceneRomeo and Juliet III.v while Olivia Hussey was only fifteen.Rosenthal, p.220 Nino Rota's Love Theme from the film, with the original lyrics (which had been drawn from several Shakespeare plays) replaced to become the song "A Time For Us", became a modest international chart hit.Buhler, Stephen M. "Musical Shakespeares" in Shaughnessy, Robert (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture" (Cambridge University Press, 2007, ) p.156-7
Baz Luhrmann (1996)