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Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet
$11.74
Hot factor: 8.3
Romeo.............................Leonard Whiting
Juliet...............................Olivia Hussey
Friar Laurence.........................Milo O'Shea
Tybalt................................Michael York
Mercutio..............................John McEnery
The Nurse..............................Pat Heywood
Lady Capulet.........................Natasha Parry
Lord Capulet.........................Paul Hardwick
Prince of Verona...................Robert Stephens
Zeffirelli's version of Shakespeare's play casts real teenagers, seventeen-year-old Leonard Whiting and sixteen-year-old Olivia Hussey. Instead of setting it in inappropriate time periods, like in the 1996 Leonardo DiCaprio version, this one is set in Renaissance Italy. The costumes are very well done, and it was filmed on location, so everything looks very realistic. However, all the actors have shaggy 60s haircuts that make this movie slightly dated. The movie reflects the "loose" values of the times in the famous nude scene. Also, Nino Rota's song, "What is a Youth," heard at the Capulet party, is achingly 60s and the performance of this song is a good scene to fast forward through.
As for the acting, there are a lot of wonderful people in this movie, such as Michael York as Tybalt. Along with a comical John McEnery, playing Mercutio, he does a great job in the fight scene; it starts out as a playful exchange of insults and escalates into a fatal fight so quickly that nobody sees it coming. However, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey are not the best actors, being so young and inexperienced. There is little magic in the balcony scene, and the waking of Juliet is very anti-climatic. In fact, the death of Mercutio turns out to be the most moving and excellently acted scene of the movie.
Zefirelli chose to cut some scenes from the play, such as Paris' murder, but in all the rearranging of scenes, he even edited some of Shakespeare's words. So, if you are looking for a great movie version of your favorite Shakespeare play, look elsewhere. As Francie said himself, his is a version of Romeo and Juliet that that was "not created for people familiar with Shakespeare."
Comparison of the 1996 version to the 1968 version can be found here:
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/9251/table.html
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