The looseness with which this sequence plays out lends it a striking realism that helps to defamiliarize one of literature’s most iconic moments. One need only to watch the famed balcony scene to see how Hussey’s almost casual rendition of Juliet’s “Where for art thou, Romeo?” speech captures the passion and yearning of love-struck teens in a very contemporary manner.
Their line readings are also at times distinctly modern-sounding, which is a feature, not a bug, of this Romeo and Juliet. By shooting on location in Italy and employing handheld camerawork, Zeffirelli further differentiated his film from more traditionally stagey Shakespeare adaptations, fully leaning into a distinctive naturalism with a stylistic dexterity that favored the urgency and immediacy of emotions above all else.Īs Romeo and Juliet, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting exhibit an innocence, naïveté, and verve that enlivens their characters, making them feel startlingly modern even as they’re reciting Shakespearean verse. In doing so, the filmmakers privileged verisimilitude over rigorous devotion to Shakespeare’s verse, as evidenced by the casting of actual teenagers in the eponymous roles for the first time in a film adaptation of the legendary play. The Digital Edition will be available later in 2021.Filmed during the Summer of Love and released soon after the Hollywood Renaissance was kickstarted by anti-authoritarian films like Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet was marketed to the youth and counterculture market of the late ’60s.
S4K's Romeo and Juliet is currently available in Physical Edition format – your PlayPack will be delivered by post. The unique PlayPack from S4KĮverything you need to get you up and running, all in one easily affordable pack! In the space of four hot summer days, the son and daughter of two long-feuding Veronese families meet, fall in love, marry and die. It's the "most famous love story in the world" - but also very funny, sadly tragic and finally uplifting. This is the one with the balcony scene - "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore* art though Romeo?" (*NB wherefore means "why", not "where" – changes the sense a bit, doesn't it?) Put on your own production of S4K's Romeo and Juliet
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