15. Romeo and Juliet (1968)

by Sam Juliano

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.

The idea was to honor the Bard’s own vision of teenagers playing the parts of his eternally popular play about the star crossed lovers.  The two leads in the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet were chosen for their physical beauty, not for any special or proven acting prowess.  In fact the performances are far more affecting because they are natural, delivered without dramatic ostentation.  The director, Franco Zeffirelli, put the cart before the horse, confident in his own ability to turn his lead players into Shakespearean thespians.  The end result was a wildly successful film version that at the time eclipsed any film version of the author’s plays in popularity by quite some distance.  Forty-six years later it still holds poll position, and remains the odds-on choice of educators aiming to supplement study of the play with a worthy film adaptation.  The film was made during the heyday of the golden reign of youth and the hippie era.  Rumor in fact has it that Zeffirelli came within a hair of convincing Paul McCartney to play the lead. An extensive talent search yielded the hiring of Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, two extraordinarily attractive actors who imbue their roles with a physical intensity of first love, the kind of love that only those who have experienced it can fully decipher.  Hence there is an innocence, purity and lack of self-awareness to these performances that make them far more affecting than could have been negotiated by older actors with proven credentials.  The film’s lovemaking scenes are charged with eroticism, and there is some nudity in a bedroom scene (that at the time was considered scandalous for a PG movie) to bring consummation to the romance.  Throughout the film the lovers endlessly embrace, kiss and neck far more than in any other version based on the play, and this propensity has interestingly brought into question whether the love would morph into a union of permanence or whether this is just the hormonal awakening of teenagers.  Obviously the right answer is the latter contention, but it is fully consistent with the manner in which Romeo and Juliet are shown in the play.  They are rash, impulsive, oblivious to the consequences of their actions and blind to everything around them save for the burning flames inside them.  Some would like to believe their love is epic and definitive, immortalized as it is through suicide, and borne from the mutual hatred of their brethren, but what we have are two people stung by Cupid’s Bow, helpless to temper their incomparable potent youthful passions.  Romeo and Juliet is not an idealized romance, but rather a cautionary tale about the dire consequences of recklessness, partially facilitated by unfortunate timing and the intrusion of fate.

 

A street brawl erupts on the streets of Verona, Italy between the long warring Montagues and the Capulets, but is immediately broken up by the Prince of the realm.  Later that night two teenage children of these families, Romeo of the Montagues and Juliet of the Capulets meet at a feast thrown by Lord Capulet, after Romeo sneaks in without invitation.  The two are immediately smitten with each other.   Romeo sizes up the situation in one of the play’s most famous passages, one lades with remarkable descriptive metaphors:

“Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright. It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night. As a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear; beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear. So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows, as yonder lady o’er her fellows shows. Did my heart love till now? Forswear it sight, for I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”

Shortly thereafter Romeo steals entrance to Juliet’s secluded garden and offers up impassioned pledges that are returned in kind by Juliet, again showcasing some of the most beautiful and rapturously poetic language in all of Shakespeare:

“Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father, and refuse thy name. Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet…’Tis but thy name that is my enemy, thou art thyself, though, not a Montague. What is Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. O be some other name. What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; so Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title. Romeo doff thy name, and for that name which is no part of thee, take all myself. (She embraces herself.)”

With tensions mounting the two lovers are secretly married with the assistance of Romeo confessor and father figure, Friar Lawrence, and Juliet’s overbearing but loyal nursemaid.  Then one of the greatest scenes in all of Shakespeare’s plays fatefully unfolds.  Juliet’s first cousin, the proud and bullying Tybalt insults Romeo, who in turn refuses to fight back, realizing that his tormentor is now a member of his family.  Mercutio’s witty sarcasm and dares eventually wear Tybalt down, and he administers a fatal thrust.  Unbeknownst to his friends, Mercutio is concealing the wound.  Before dying he delivers one of the play’s most celebrated speeches, starting with the famous line “A plague on both your houses” and responding to a friend’s disbelieving taunt as to the seriousness of the wound: “No, tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door, but tis enough; twill serve; ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.  When Mercutio’s death is revealed to his shocked countrymen, Romeo finally comes around, engaging in a frantic duel with Tybalt, whom he kills after some lucky timing.  His fellow Montagues wisk Romeo away as the shaken youth laments “I am fortune’s fool.”  Both Capulet and Montague are ordered to appear before the Prince in the town square, and he promptly sentences Romeo to banishment, warning that if the youth-in-hiding should surface “That day will be his last.”

Not knowing Juliet has married Romeo, Lord Capulet arranges her marriage to Count Paris.  Juliet enlists the support of Friar Lawrence to escape this edict, and consumes a potion that will make her appear (temporarily) dead for forty-two hours.  Friar Lawrence dispatches Friar John to bring a letter to Romeo informing him of the hoax, but fate intervenes when Romeo’s friend Balthazar witnesses Juliet’s “funeral.” Balthazar reaches Romeo just moments before Friar John, setting in motion the tragic finale.  In despair Romeo arrives at the tomb and kills himself by drinking poison he obtained from an apothecary, right after kissing Juliet.  Waking shortly after Romeo dies, Juliet stabs herself to death with his dagger:

“Then I’ll be brief. O happy dagger! This is thy sheath. There rust and let me die.”

The two grief-stricken families meet before the Prince and agree to end their feud, after he regales them with their shame:

Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!
See what a scourge is laid upon your hate;
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love;
And I, for winking at your discords too,
Have lost a brace of kinsmen;
All are punished. All are punished! (ECHO: punished!)

A very nice touch by Zeffirelli was to enlist none other than the great Laurence Olivier to serve as the film’s narrator, reciting both the Prologue and the four final sorrowful lines:

A glooming peace this morning with it brings.

The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head.

For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Visually the film is stunning.  Zeffirelli’s experience as  a set designer for opera and his keen attention of costumes, scenery and color have always made his visual compositions a feast for the eyes, but the sumptuous, resplendent look of his Romeo and Juliet took Shakespeare adaptations to new heights.  He was of course significantly aided by the celebrated journeyman cinematographer Pasquelino de Santis, whose impressive resume includes Visconti’s exquisite L’Innocente and Bresson’s Lancelot of the Lake and L’Argent.  De Santis won the Best Cinematography Oscar for Romeo and Juliet, and the film’s ravishing color control, which strikingly contrasts the bright and dusty reds, browns and yellows with darkened green hues of the balcony and tomb sequences.  The picturesque Tuscany locations help to bring the play to life and forge a startling immediacy.  Unsurprisingly the film’s second Academy Award was given to costume designer Danilo Donati, whose period work here is unsurpassed for accuracy and physical beauty.  Mssrs. Zeffirelli, de Santis and Donati may have crafted their magic for documentation by cameras, but the end results are the work of a Renaissance painter.

If Zeffirelli successfully assembled the right team to bring eye candy of inordinate richness to his proceedings, the same can easily be applied to the astonishingly lyrical score by celebrated composer Nino Rota.  Known for his brilliant music for Federico Fellini and the iconic theme music for the Godfather films, his music for Romeo and Juliet is the greatest of his career.  Brimming with sumptuous melody, the love theme, rightly encored during the film’s key romantic scenes, is now part of the popular culture.  After noted film composer Henry Mancini covered it with a  lovely instrumental version a year later -and brought it to Number 1 against all odds during the rock era- he explained that he and his wife were moved to tears upon first hearing at at a showing of the film shortly after it released.  At the time he declared it was “the most beautiful music I ever heard.”  The song’s success on AM radio brought on satiric barbs from hosts like Dan Ingram, who asked his listeners if they had the feeling they were listening to the wrong station.   In any case the achingly gorgeous melody  inspired the arresting period ballad “What is a Youth?” sung during the costume ball.  Some lovely organ accompaniment and a sublime wedding solo by vocalist Anna Polakova all add up to one of the most rapturous and melodically beautiful scores ever written for the cinema.

What is a youth?
Impetuous fire.
What is a maid?
Ice and desire.
The world wags on

A rose will bloom,
It then will fade
So does a youth.
So does the fairest maid.

Comes a time when one sweet smile
Has it’s season for awhile
Then Love’s in love with me

Some may think only to marry.
Others will tease and tarry.
Mine is the very best parry,
Cupid he rules us all.

Caper the caper; sing me the song
Death will come soon to hush us along
Sweeter than honey and bitter as gall,
Love is a pass-time that never will pall.
Sweeter than honey and bitter as gall,
Cupid he rules us all.

(20 second flute interlude)

A rose will bloom, it then will fade.
So does a youth.
So does the fairest maid.

The play is replete with references to heat and the adverse effect it has on people, making them impatient, volatile and impetuous.  Zeffirelli does a great job visualizing it, showing it as a kind of psychological tug of war between those whose temper are rising, while clinging to the fleeting hope to maintain the peace.  The big fight centerpiece, and one of the most famous scenes in all of Shakespeare is brilliant staged, with a playful banter between Mercutio and Tybalt slowly transforming into a lethal dual that will jump start the story towards its tragic conclusion.

No version of Romeo and Juliet, whether on stage or screen can fly without accomplished performances.  Whether by luck or uniformly inspired casting Zeffirelli get extraordinary work for the most vital roles.  Whiting, an extraordinarily handsome young blue-eyed young man that had women swooning and the stunningly beautiful dark-haired Juliet as played by Olivia Hussey were beautiful to look it, but equally as vital, their naivete and innocence was successfully negotiated by their inexperience.  It is significant that some of the longer speeches were trimmed to lighten the load for the principals, but also to enhance the relevance for contemporary audiences.  Shakespeare spoken by Shakespearean actors is not quite the same as Shakespeare spoken by relative amateurs.  In any case, the other leads are played by established actors and there are three that are simply outstanding: Michael York as Tybalt, John McEnery as Mercutio and Pat Heywood as the Nurse.  York portrays cocky insolence an befits the Capulets’ bullying leader.  No other actor in the film can match York’s career, yet at the time he was just starting out, having been cast by Zeffirelli the previous year as Lucentio in another Bard favorite, The Taming of the Shrew.  He is well-known for his role as the bisexual Brian Roberts opposite Liza Minelli in Bob Fosse’s Cabaret (1972), and several years later in The Three Musketeers, his work in the 1977 mini-series Jesus of Nazareth (yet again for Zeffirelli) brought him some of the best reviews of his career.

 

As the perpetrator of sly wit and veiled sarcasm, John McEnery delivers the most charismatic performance in the film as the Montagues’ loquacious pied piper.  He is masterful in the dual scene, bringing together physical agility with  vocal teasing that turns to anguish.  The role represented his screen debut, and it remains his most celebrated.  He later portrayed Russian provisional government President Alexander Kerensky in the 1971 Nicholas and Alexandra, and the following as the title character in Bartleby opposite Paul Scofield.

Pat Heywood plays Juliet’s dutiful nurse with a bawdy if properly exasperating countenance.  The character provides Romeo and Juliet with comic relief, as she always seems to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, and her long-winded tantrums and bumbling border on caricature.  Like McEnery, Romeo and Juliet represented Heywood’s maiden film role.  She later portrayed killer John Christie’s wife in 1971’s 10 Rillington Place, and Winston Churchill’s nurse in Young Winston (1972).  As the well-intentioned but inept Friar Lawrence, the Irish character actor Milo O’Shea brings a liberal slant to his bumbling but lovable intermediary.  Robert Stephens plays the Prince as compassionate but intolerant of his subjects’ foolish feuding.  Bruce Robinson is another pretty face Zeffirelli chose in his appeal to young viewers.  Throughout, he and de Santis use the close-up in wholly arresting terms.

No Shakespeare play -or any play for that matter- is performed with more regularity than Romeo and Juliet.  Likewise, there have been more films made from the play than just about about any other property.  The most famous include the 1936 MGM adaptation, directed by George Cukor, starring Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer; the 1954 British-Italian version that featured Lawrence Harvey and Susan Shentall as the star crossed lovers; the electrifying 1961 operatic musical West Side Story, which updated the story to the present, switching the warring families in Verona with Manhattan street gangs; and Baz Luhrmann’s MTV-style William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, made in 1996 which starred heartthrobs Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, and featured a rock soundtrack.  The earlier films were cast with older performers, while the latest film followed Zeffirelli’s lead, but all in all yielded mixed results.

In the end it was the anti-establishment, headstrong and idealistic lovers as painted (both literally and figuratively) by Zeffirelli that has kept this film in the nation’s classrooms as the definite version of the play, and in fact as the most accessible and captivating Shakespeare film of any kind.  This Romeo and Juliet is wildly romantic, and it lovers stand for peace, love and freedom.  It was all the rage in the late 60’s, what will the flower-child sensibilities, and it has remained as admired today for that for its irresistible physical beauty and traditional approach.  I’ve used it no less than a half dozen times after a teaching unit on the play with Junior High School kids, and I dare say no film of any kind has garnered the level of enthusiasm this 1968 work has.