Juliet’s parents are trying to marry her off at 14, the same age her mother was married off before her. The young heroes don’t have much in common with, say, The Graduate ’s Benjamin Braddock ,but they’re similarly depicted as kids looking for happiness in a world that’s closed off one option after another before they’ve had a chance to choose. Those choices go a long way toward explaining why Romeo and Juliet became a generational touchstone. But when the violent ends arrive, he flees the scene.ģ. “These violent delights have violent ends.” He’s right about that.

Friar Lawrence (Milo O’Shea) lauds a cooler sort of love he ought to know the hotblooded Romeo can’t heed.

The film emphasizes the foolishness of Juliet’s nurse (beautifully played by Pat Heywood), whose romantic notion pushes Juliet into a relationship with tragic consequences she should have foreseen. Romeo and Juliet’s parents are distant, disconnected, and distracted. “In contrast to Shakespeare’s evenhanded apportioning of blame,” Shakespearan scholar Ramona Wray writes in the essay accompanying the disc, “Zeffirelli’s interpretation places the guilt solely on the shoulders of the adults.” That sense pervades the film, in part thanks to Zeffirelli’s decision to hire young actors - in the case of its leads, very young actors - in the parts of youthful characters. One generation’s conflict will exact a toll on the next. An uncredited Laurence Olivier delivers the words of the chorus in a weary voiceover and the action immediately makes pungent the irony of the opening line referencing “Two households, both alike in dignity.” The representatives of said houses behave like delinquent toughs, filling Verona’s streets with violence in the name of some “ancient grudge” never revealed (and perhaps unknown even to those shedding blood in its name). Zeffirelli stages his Romeo and Juliet in Verona, Italy (though he shot the exteriors in other Italian cities), the setting of the play, and the film’s costumes and set design are contemporaneous with Shakespeare.* The bold interpretive choices can be found elsewhere. Maybe it’s because Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 adaptation, stylized as Romeo + Juliet, is so stylistically audacious that any other take kind of looks staid by comparison, but my memory was of Zeffirelli’s being the safe, traditional take on Shakespeare. That said, while I recall liking the film, I certainly misremembered it. Maybe it’s time to rewatch To Kill a Mockingbird, too.Ģ. I feel like there’s a whole class of movies that have left muddled first impressions because of this. Televisions have gotten better and VHS has been supplanted, but I can’t imagine the experience has been improved that much. But even when they were appropriate, as with Romeo and Juliet, in my day it was usually a case of 25 students squinting, if they’re paying attention at all, to watch a 20-inch screen.

I think I was awake for about 20 minutes. I remember a history teacher who showed us the entirety of the 3+ hour 1988 miniseries Gore Vidal’s Lincoln (starring Sam Waterston and Mary Tyler Moore as Abe and Mary Todd, respectively). Has anyone ever had a good experience watching a movie in a classroom? Often they’re crutches for lazy teachers. What follows are some thoughts on the film.ġ. That’s where I first watched it and, having not revisited it since, I decided to watch it again after receiving the new Criterion Blu-ray, which the company released on Valentine’s Day. Later generations almost invariably first encountered it in English class, where it would become a supplemental staple to units covering Romeo and Juliet, the first Shakespeare play most people encounter as high school students. Released 55 years ago, Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet became a zeitgeist-capturing hit.

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