STAR-CROSSED LOVERS®
A thesis presented to
the faculty of
the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University
In partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree
Master of Arts
By
Carolina Conte
August 2001
2
STAR-CROSSED LOVERS®
BY
CAROLINA SIQUEIRA CONTE
has been approved for
the School of Film and
the College of Fine Arts by
Jenny Lau
Associate Professor of International Film Studies
Raymond Tymas-Jones
Dean, College of Fine Arts
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CONTE, CAROLINA S. M.A. August 2001. School of Film. Star-Crossed Lovers.
(88pp.)
Director of the Thesis: Jenny Lau
This thesis develops an analyses on film adaptations, more specifically William
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, concentrating on the two most popular films (in terms
of audience): Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) and Baz Luhrmann’s William
Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996). My analyses of the Shakespearean work adapted
to the screen observes the nature of each of the media involved, theater and cinema, and
how they relate to each other, in terms of differences and similarities, to bring the
Shakespeare drama to the spectator according to different contexts. The first part of this
writing addresses general comments on adaptation; the second part brings specific issues
of having Shakespeare adapted in film; and the last part of the thesis discusses
exclusively Romeo and Juliet from William Shakespeare’s play to the main film
productions of this century, with special emphasis on Franco Zeffirelli’s and Baz
Luhrmann’s films. In my conclusions I observe the contextual aspects that constitute
these later adaptations of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet on the screen. Zeffirelli’s and
Luhrmann’s films are examples of the creative potential of film adaptations and of the
imperative of the adapted works to continue communicating the everlasting tragedy of the
star-crossed lovers.
Approved: Jenny Lau
Associate Professor of International Film Studies
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For Teo, Joe and Papai
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Acknowledgments
This work is the result of a study that started two years ago in my home country,
thanks to my professor and friend the filmmaker Flávia Seligman.
It was challenging for me to write this thesis in English, attempting to make
myself clear in a foreign language. Therefore, I would like to thank my friend Justin
Zimmerman and my advisor Jenny Lau for helping me in the rewritings.
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Table of Contents
Page
Introduction ………………………………………………………………………….…..7
I.
General Comments on Film Adaptations ………………………………...12
II.
Adapting Shakespeare …….…….………………………………………….17
A. Adapting Time and Space in Films ……………………………………….....18
B. Shakespeare’s Dialogues in Film …………………………………………….25
C. Acting Performances in Shakespeare’s Films ………………………………..27
D. From Theater to Film ………….……………………………………………..29
III.
Romeo and Juliet ……..……………………………………………………..31
A. From Shakespeare’s Life .…………………………………………………....32
B. Popularizing Shakespeare .…………………………………………………...35
C. Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare ………………………………….40
D. Romeo and Juliet Film Adaptations ………………………………………….46
IV.
Analysis of the Films ……………………………………………………….56
A. Romeo and Juliet, by Franco Zeffirelli ……………………………………....56
B. William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, by Baz Luhrmann …………………65
VI.
Conclusion ……..…………………………………………………………...78
Works cited ……………………………………………………………………………..85
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Introduction
Most of the discussions on adaptation tend to be narrowed to the issue of fidelity,
always connecting the idea of adaptation as a reproduction of an original material,
commonly seen as good or bad in terms of how faithful it is to the source. My
observations on the subject follow the ideas found in the most recent writings on
adaptation, which move away from moralistic analysis, avoiding “terms such as
infidelity, betrayal, deformation, violation, vulgarization, and desecration… carrying its
specific charge of outraged negativity.” (Robert Stam in Naremore, p.54) The issue that I
want to address regarding adaptation is not fidelity, but the differences among the media
involved in this process and what these differences entail. Moreover, I want to discuss
adaptation not only as a technical process, but rather, as a technical process used to
achieve certain artistic dimensions and addressed to particular audiences. Walter
Benjamin, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, states that the
work of art has always been reproducible. The reproduced material however would
always lack in the temporal and spatial elements which defines the aura, the uniqueness
of the original piece of art. The authority of the original, the aura, is only present in a
particular situation. Nevertheless, the lack of the aura does not really matter.
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My approach to this matter constitutes only a supportive introduction to the main
subject of this work, which purposes to develop an analyses of film adaptations of
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, concentrating on the two most popular films (according
to a pop culture assumption): Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) and Baz
Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996). My analyses of the
Shakespearean work adapted to the big screen will observe the nature of each of the
media involved, theater and cinema, and how they relate to each other, in terms of
differences and similarities, to bring the Shakespeare drama to the spectator. Working
with actual creative material, the universe created by the pen for the stage and particular
examples of this universe recreated by the camera, I will be responding to the problem of
this thesis, which is: how can a Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet, become an original
and innovative cinematic work?
Adapting art pieces implies a translation of language, a change of medium that
inevitably creates a different product as result. An adaptation cannot exist as a copy of its
source, it must be understood as an original work that exists by itself, adapting is to begin
from what is thought to be an expandable source and develop creatively on it with
technical processes of distinguished nature. Regardless of the acceptance and
appreciation of its source (within its particular medium), in an adaptation what really
matters is if it is efficiently translated to the new medium, and its acceptance,
appreciation, as a film – and nothing else. The source might be present in the film in
variable degrees, but mostly as an outside material to inspire transcending ideas, creative
possibilities, toward the construction of a personal and unique interpretation of a given
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reality. The source might be a novel, a romance, a historical fact, a poem or a play, the
key element in adapting is not in re-telling the source, but rather, to approach it under
another perspective, according to a different context. The medium changing carries the
original and creative elements of the process, once it elucidates new and unique manners
of constructing a new “product.” An adaptation must clearly express the different ways in
which it was made and the finality of its realization.
Shakespeare produced extraordinary plays whose complexity and brilliance
always affect in some manner anyone who turns his/her attention to him, even for the
time of a look. The Bard was able to comment not only on his society but on people in
such a manner that the form and content of his work, even after more than four hundred
years, remain a wide focus of interest. The context has changed but the social
functioning, the human psyche and the way people communicate their emotions, still
operate in the same way, and that is why the secular Shakespeare’s legacy had become a
filmic appropriation as well. This “young medium” (if compared to theater), besides its
intrinsic capability to tell people about the “what” of something, must be always looking
for a “how,” to accomplish a different interpretations to the “what.” Filmmaking involves
an impressive technological apparatus, capable of many accomplishments, but also
represents an artistic medium which can communicate with a vast number of people, a
wide audience never before imagined. Shakespeare and film met, not accidentally, and
became a relevant and exciting matter of discussion. This encounter now evokes not only
the merits of the writer and the “new” medium, but the diffusion of an unquestionable
piece of art to an uncountable number of spectators through the means of the film
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industry and its commercial implications. It would be hard to say which one was more
determinant for this fact, the quality of the work as a film or the intense adaptation of this
work, but the truth is that Shakespeare’s version of the tragedy of the young lovers has
perpetuated as the universal love story. Romeo and Juliet was based on previous sources
that Shakespeare adapted to write his stage version in 1595. Film is not the only medium
responsible for making Romeo and Juliet an universal love story, but, nowadays, it
certainly made important contributions to turn it into one of the most popular of
Shakespeare’s plays. What comes to support such statement is the character of the two
most successful Romeo and Juliet productions: Zeffirelli’s and Luhrmann’s were popular
orientated Shakespeare films, very successfully in box-office numbers, if compared to
any other Shakespeare adaptation on the screen. Luhrmann’s film was “the number one
grossing film in America the weekend it opened,” (Gary Taylor in Desmet and Sawyer,
1999, p.197) and Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet also generated “immense profit in the boxoffice.” (Rothwell, 1999, p.133) The questions to be answered regarding the Romeo and
Juliet films arise from the same realm of any adaptation, which I already mentioned, but
increase in complexity because of the level of artistic-aura occupied by Shakespeare and
the mass consumption society in which we live today: how was the translation of media
made? With what finality? Accomplishing what significance?
The first part of this writing is destined to issues of adaptation, the translation of
different languages, the adoption of different media, as a progressive act of creation of a
new artistic piece. In this section I will be observing technical implications of such
process and briefly commenting on the notion of fidelity. The second part brings specific
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issues of having Shakespeare adapted in film, the particularities of the two media
involved (theater and film). This section also includes some ideas on aspects like
dialogue and acting performances and how they were treated in the filmic medium. The
last part of the thesis discusses exclusively Romeo and Juliet from William Shakespeare’s
play to the main film productions of this century, with special emphasis on Franco
Zeffirelli’s and Baz Luhrmann’s films.
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I. General Comments on Film Adaptations
The unique existence of a work of art, its aura, is still, as I perceive, an issue that
must be more carefully observed when we talk about adaptations. Andre Bazin, for
instance, in Film Adaptation, notes that the notion of aura depends on the context in
which the work is contemplated, once the placement might change its nature. The context
of exhibition might be different, “nonetheless, these works of art are still original.”
(André Bazin in Naremore, p.19) It is under this definition that I would like to start my
discussion on cinema adaptation, the art of translating art languages.
Cinema has narrative rules like literature. Cinema has its own language and
conventions, but is an art related to literature in having the common finality to tell stories,
in having characters to develop these stories. For Sergei Eisenstein the whole
cinematographic process is an art essentially related to literature traditions and
methodologies. An analysis of lenses and shots employed with certain angles and
determined lighting – depending on form, content, and goals of the film – makes a
precise analogy of phrases and word analysis and their use within a literary work.
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Regarding film it is important to address that in using the camera the story will
always be told with a certain point-of-view. The camera will always exclude more than
reveal once it places reality into a 2-dimensional, rectangular frame. The frame-speech
(angle, movements, framing, editing) creates meanings which are not part of the original
situation. In adapting, we are translating different languages. Cinema is a particular
language which can employ uncountable possibilities to transmit the beauty and deepness
of each situation approached. It explores the human sensibility with images and sounds
used at the same time, and presented in realistic looking settings (versus what might be
abstract in theater) and with different possible constructions (through the editing process).
Adaptations may require much more ability and originality that any original work
of art to succeed in their way of expression. Many film studios, producers, directors and
scriptwriters are easily attracted by the promotion of best-seller books or the fame of
successful novels and plays. However, it is very hard to adapt great literature and theater
works, therefore, searching for greater recognition, some films are based on mediocre
sources, so they can be said to be superior to their original sources.
Books can be published, plays presented in local theaters, but films require a
whole infra-structure for their production, distribution and exhibition. Adapting a novel
into film means also to produce a story acceptable to a market as a commercial product
which needs to satisfy a public and bring profits (if an audience is actually intended).
Adapting is creating a new original, where source and form must balance themselves. By
its nature the adaptation is a talking between different mediums. Adapting implicates a
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necessity to change, rethink, re-conceptualize and understand the inherent differences of
the media involved in the process, how to fit the original material within different
parameters.
Adapting also involves the matter of measuring. The commercial cinema requires
two-hours long films what, according to Marcos Rey in O Roteirista Profissional, make
long novels often terrible film adaptations due to excessive synthesis. Synthesizing
involves an extensive amount of material: create and combine characters, sometimes add
information. Sometimes, the novel has so many scenes that all that needs to be done is to
choose the scenes that can carry the story in the filmic form with more coherence. Other
times scenes need to be created, as it would be done in an original script. Books and plays
always have indications of scenes that are not shown, implicit actions, a subtext, which
can be used in the adaptation. “A book can take fifty to a hundred pages to deliver an
information, something that a film can do in three minutes.”(Rey, 1989) As film is much
faster, each second is very important. A good adaptation concentrates, impacts and
synthesizes the attractions of a literary source. It builds its details through images. The
information about the story, characters, ideas, images and style are delivered at the same
moment. Film works in the present – immediate, active. When we watch a film we are in
the same position of the character. We, like them, do not know what is going to happen,
there is no time to control the pacing of the events which are taking place, as one can do
in reading a book, pausing to think.
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A film can add many dimensions to a play using different shots and angles, also
through the editing process. Film and play are different. In film time and space are
fragmented, visually and verbally, almost all dialogues are modified by the images. The
cinematographic form has the possibility to modify the original literary content because it
is a different language. Language is the expression of an idea, which acquires shape
according to the interpretation of the creator, his/her way to see and create. The cinema
interprets the world and creates its own reality, and, the best approach to film adaptation
is the one which respects the cinematic particularities and potentialities to be different
from stories about the same matter produced by other media.
The making of film out of an earlier text is virtually as old as the
machinery of cinema itself. Well over half of all commercial films have
come from literary originals - though by no means all of these originals
are revered or respected. If we confine ourselves to those cases where the
adaptation process is foregrounded- that is, where the original is held up as
a worthy source or goal - there are still several possible modes of relation
between the film and the text. These modes can, for convenience, be
reduced to three: borrowing, intersection, and fidelity of transformation.
(Dudley Andrew in Naremore, 2000, p.29)
I must agree with Dudley Andrew that an adaptation is an appropriation of a
meaning from a prior text, but it is an appropriation that will be working on this given
meaning and producing another one. In their creative process, filmmakers, as artists, have
all the possibilities to make an adaptation a totally original work, and it is certainly in this
process that the status of film director might truly assume the role of auteur. Hitchcock in
his interview with Truffaut said, regarding adaptation, that if he really liked the basic idea
of the source of inspiration, a book for instance, he would put it aside and then start to
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create cinema, on his own. As auteur the director is imposing his/her own considerations,
views of the audiences, historical situations, and cultural politics.
Adapting is a process which rearranges elements to tell a story under a different
context, through a different medium. Adapting must not be a work of reproduction once it
has all the possibilities to offer many new elements that will make it an original inspired
on another original, and not a mere reproduction
The idea of adaptation from one medium to another can be summarized in a issue
raised by Andrew: we take the Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo Da Vinci. “Can we
attempt to reproduce the meaning of the Mona Lisa in a poem, or of a poem in a musical
phrase, or even a music phrase in an aroma?” (Dudley Andrew in Naremore, 2000, p.32)
Each medium has its own particularities, its own ways of construction, therefore
adaptation from one medium to another is something that cannot be called reproduction
within the notion of copy, loss of originality, and aura. The art is working in a different
context, it is a new product, and in film the work of art is being made accessible to a
larger number of people.
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II. Adapting Shakespeare
If Shakespeare were alive he would be writing film scripts. (Shaughnessy,
1998, p.3)
We might say today that we cannot even estimate “exactly how many films have
been made from Shakespearean plays and plots.” (Ian Johnson in Eckert, 1972, p.8)
William Shakespeare offers filmmakers all possible elements of seduction for the making
of a film. The universal recognition of his name makes any adaptation of his plays a
choice based on a popular base. Theater was, and fortunately still is, an accessible
medium, but now, together with radio and television, film represents a new way to
communicate with audiences. Shakespeare plays are genuinely theater pieces, made for
this sake, and the level of abstraction inherent to the theater contrasts drastically with the
realist characteristic of the film in capturing the moment, the nature as it is. Shakespeare
plays have given filmmakers the possibility to attempt different interpretations of the
Bard’s texts. Nevertheless, many problems arise from these different interpretation, and
they dwell not only in the complexity of the Shakespearean work, but, mainly, in the
conflicts between the aesthetic traditions of each of the media (film and theater) - when
we start to translate original works of one medium to the other.
It is obvious that immense problems arise from the encounter between
Shakespeare and the cinema, and that what is involved is not just general
relations between theater and cinema, or of adaptation of literary works to
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film. There are, in Shakespeare’s drama itself, so many perspectives, so
many poetic and dramatic potentials, that when the cinema approaches it,
it touches upon an entire universe. (Henri Lemaitre in Eckert, 1972, p.27)
Many Shakespearean adaptations in film are actually only stage plays filmed.
Inevitably, they fail in achieving the originality, the particular context of the theatrical
productions they aimed to reproduce. Perhaps, in this manner, a completely faithful
reproduction of a Shakespeare play in film could only be justified for an educational
sake. In this case film does not actually play the role of a medium, by its own, but, a way
to present another medium - an educational tool. The BBC versions of Shakespeare plays,
carrying the “aura of ‘official’ Shakespeare,” (Michael Anderegg in Naremore, 2000,
p.165) are in fact audiovisual productions which only reproduce the Shakespeare plays.
They bring the stage work without aiming of creating and exploring the possibilities of
the different medium. The BBC versions are more likely to introduce Shakespeare’s work
under educational purposes.
Film and television reproductions of Shakespeare are in essence no
different from other forms of reproduction, in theatre or education: they
have specific commercial and cultural functions within the economic and
ideological apparatus of a bourgeois-democratic society. (Graham
Holderness in Shaugnessy, 1998, p.81)
A. Adapting Time and Space in Films
“Shakespeare’s play is a finished work, deserving the respect due a masterpiece.”
(Brode, 2000, p.51) The filmmaker’s challenge is however, working in a distinguished
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medium, to present a personal view of the play, and not to faithfully reproduce the
Shakespearean play: “the Elizabethan audience needed to first hear in order to then see in
their mind’s eye. Such passages [in film] now best serve as stage directions.” (Douglas
Brode, 2000, p.52) Making a film of Shakespeare means adaptation, literally, not of a
film from the play but of a film from a screenplay. Having Shakespeare as the screenplay
source can represent an undeniable virtue to the film, or, on the other hand, a great
problem. Yet the word adaptation must be truly understood, in a sense that liberties can
be taken, and they are inevitable because of the different nature, rules, of cinema.
The theater will always be “the legitimate expressive medium for authentic
Shakespeare.” (Daives and Wells, 1994, p.1) Although, essentially, Shakespeare films are
exactly how the Shakespearean plays are supposed to be: temporal and spatial
experiences, stories to be seen and heard. Cinema gives Shakespeare plays a whole
different dynamic, different forms of identification than the ones offered by the stage.
More perspectives, angles, shots, movement, stillness, are bringing in different settings
and locations, images, sound, textures and colors, “elements joining in endless
permutations.” (Buchman, 1991, p.12) Cinema also offers the possibility of
defamiliarization of the Shakespearean work, a new and/or different awareness of the
plays: “the familiar can appear to us with new precision when we have the luxury of a
new point of view, a point of view born of myriad formal devices in art and literature.”
(Buchman, 1991, p.13) The many Shakespeare films which have been produced have
showed us that, despite incorporation and subtractions attempting to adapt according to
the context in which the film is made, such productions can still retain the dramatic
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power found in the original Shakespearean work: “the spatial strategy is a triumph of
convincing realistic indulgence which never vitiates either clarity and complexity of
dramatic moment, or delineation of character.” (Davies, 1988, p.16)
True for each of Shakespeare’s plays: all take place in a universe that,
locations of individual stories aside, are part and parcel of the world
according to Will. Today, then, the difficult of the filmmaker is to decide
how that philosophical and psychological terrain can best be visualized.
(Brode, 2000, p.14)
The relationships between time and space that is established within each the
media, film and theater, is the basis for the discussion on the medium adaptation.
The fluid nature of time and space in Shakespeare drama suggests
remarkable links to the non-linear, open structure of the motion picture; as
with film, laws of cause and effect and verisimilitude do not control the
structure of Shakespeare's play. (Buchman, 1991, p.107)
The intrinsic fragmented dynamic of cinema might alternate the timing
experience, the structure of theater plays, but, so far, such change has not happened to
Shakespeare plays. As we see in Still in Movement, the theatrical presentation stresses
the possibility of simultaneity in action, where more than one action can take place on the
stage at same time, while in film our attention is concentrated in a single, framed action
that directs the focus of the scene. In film, the temporal dimension is a variable element,
which can be modified and create meaning through the editing process. The juxtaposition
of images will, or will not, determine an impression of temporal simultaneity, once the
actions are following a time-line sequence.
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In the spatial structure we can observe clearer illustrations of the different
dynamic of the two media. In film we see the story under many points of view, we are,
permanently, interacting between the inside and the outside worlds. Cinema gives us a
spatial mobility that is limited in theater due to the physical obstacles of the stage. “Film
presents Shakespeare’s world through a misé-en-scene that renders the vastness of
intimate space as much as the intimacy of a vast exterior.” (Buchman, 1991, p.33) Going
with the camera, where it takes us, joining its journey, we are not just experiencing new
definitions of inner and outer worlds, but finding new tensions, dramatic actions
sometimes hidden by the physical distance that separates the audience from the stage.
To put in another way, part of the spatial field of cinema comes from the
capacity of the camera to realize a vertical meaning of the text, to travel
and hence expose the level of dramatic action operating underneath, to
give form to an aspect of the performance text that is “below.” That
movement of the camera, however, works only because it contrasts with
all that is still. (Buchman, 1991, p.37)
Regarding spatial references, the close-up exists as one of the most important
filmic devices. Film cannot intend to do what theater does, it must offer a new context,
coherent with its own perspectives and creative potentialities. The camera might bring
intimacy or accentuate human distances, it can penetrate what are unachievable spaces
for the theater. The mobility of the camera intensifies the tension in film, and achieves its
climax with the close-up. Close-up shots give the spectator a vision of what in the play is
unknown, never revealed. The audience interacts with the story as a totally different plan
(in a very close view, an intimate discovery, a more, apparently, “physical” proximity)
through the expressions of the face, which strength of emotional connections. Framing in
close-up the filmmaker makes his/her audience establish a relation of great intimacy with
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the characters of the film. To the spectator is given an usually hidden part of the story,
putting him/her in a very privileged situation - to look at the secret: “he or she can look at
a world normally unseen, or seen only within the context of a more comprehensive
picture.” (Buchman, 1991, p.68 )
The “secrets” of Shakespeare’s plays find a new context for their
realization. Covert acts find in the close-up an appropriate space for
performance. It is the space where we observe, in isolation, the vial of
poison poured in the goblet, the naked point of the rapier, the hands of a
murder, or the stabbing of a king. (Buchmann, 1991, p.68)
The intimacy of the close-up is manifested completely in the vocal intonation of
the actor, speaking “close” to the audience, while “the Shakespearean climax is a fine
gesture and a loud voice.” (Davies, 1988, p.181) In film, the space created is no longer
the abstract, as the one of Shakespeare’s writings. With the camera the space is actually
“real,” and enforced by the rhythm determined by the particular interpretations draw from
the original play. The filmmaker, like Shakespeare, is creating a space, but he/she cannot
be limited to what is written on the paper, he/she must create what is not there – the
“real” world that in which the story exists: “he or she also has the capacity to bring
attention to the cinematic art and to imitate, in that medium, Shakespeare’s own selfconscious reflections.” (Buchman, 1991, p.84)
Shakespeare plays force an active participation of imaginary forces. In film the
space is there, visual, present, “real,” and the spectator starts a natural talk with the
medium, aware of the presence of the camera giving the Shakespearean drama. The
juxtaposition of temporal and spatial relations marks the fundamental differentiation of
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the media, “film provides a new space for Shakespeare’s poetry, a space in which an
event can find new life because it appears in a fresh context.” (Buchman, 1991, p.148)
Orson Welles, for instance, in adapting Shakespeare (Macbeth, 1948, Othello,
1952, and Chimes at Midnight, 1966), kept the theatrical inspiration of the sets, and did
not do much in moving the camera. He basically shot theater. In attempting to translate
Shakespeare to the film medium, Welles’ work remained as an art piece, far from wide
audiences, in a sense, because what he produced was closer to photographed play. He
never truly explored the film possibilities to transcend the theatrical medium, with closeups for example, in a legitimate freedom to exhibit more realistically the lives of the
characters, under a different perspective. On the other hand, to explore the differences of
the medium was certainly one of the great merits of Franco Zeffirelli. His Romeo and
Juliet was enjoyed by a general audience because of its qualities as a film, and not a
Shakespeare story.
Context is a fundamental issue to proceed on this discussion. It must be said that
even a theater play, the legitimate way of expression of the Shakespearean work, is an
adaptation. It is still the same medium, but the context is different, and like any other of
the arts, because of their ephemeral nature, the plays must follow, at least in certain
extent, “the current concerns of the societies from which these productions spring.”
(Davies, 1988, p.3) The merit in adapting a film dwells in the creative possibility which
gives a contemporary response to what Shakespeare did more than four centuries ago. To
actually have an artistic function, the film adaptation must present itself differently from
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the printed text made for the theater, otherwise it will be a mere recording of a stage
action, a photographic reproduction of the play. Modernizing Shakespeare follows a
process alike to which the Bard also used to follow, as he used history to write his plays.
Sir Ian McKellen notes that Shakespeare, himself, is a totally up to date artist, “I’m
constantly taking comfort from the fact that Shakespeare is modern.” (Sir Ian McKellen
in Cineaste, 1998, v.24, p.46) Shakespeare plays, however, cannot exist on the screen
exactly as Shakespeare wrote them. His themes and characters can easily be applied, but
this is not true to his texts. The words written by Shakespeare are more than four hundred
years old, and it is in the Elizabethan period that these words achieve their complete
signification.
An audience at the time, when Shakespeare wrote the plays, would have
known about this prehistory, but you can’t expect a modern cinema
audience to have any understanding of that, apart from the fact that they
have gone out for an evening’s entertainment… I do believe that you can
cut the text… you can change the text, and you can also move text around
– it’s a strong Shakespearean tradition to take a scene or a line of a dialog
and move it. Shakespeare did it all the time. (Richard Loncraine in
Cineaste, 1998, v.24, p.47)
Oliver Parker observes that “if he [Shakespeare] was alive today, he’d be
radically reworking the text for a new medium, and would most likely want to direct it.”
(Oliver Parker in Cineaste, 1998, v.24, p.48) Shakespeare’s plays were written for the
stage, and its specific and limited way to tell the story, a rigidity that contrast with the
potential perspectives of the cinematic medium. The film adaptation works with visual
possibilities, establishing relations exclusive to its medium (and not achievable by any
25
other one): “between the actor and the decor, between space and time and between the
dramatic presentation and the audience.” (Davies, 1988, p.9)
The major difference between cinematic and theatrical presentation lies in
the relationships of components rather than in essence: the relationship of
action to time, and, more especially in the case of Shakespearean drama,
the relationship of the aural to the visual. While theatre can, and frequently
does, incorporate spectacle of location as an organic dimension of its
expression, so cinema has come to incorporate dialogue. (Daives, 1988,
p.3)
B. Shakespeare’s Dialogue in Film
Editing is just one of the essential characteristics that distinguish film and theater,
and its consequences in the film dialogue must be emphasized in this work. Douglas
Brode, in Shakespeare in the Movies, addresses the editing process as the most
determinant cinematographic tool in “interpreting” Shakespeare. In theater the dialogue
lines must be the action itself, while in film it is the images, without words, that have this
function. In his writing, Shakespeare’s action was concentrated in speeches and gestures.
Film can have all that in variable perspectives of light, color, texture, shapes and lines
organized within frames and their juxtapositions, which will compose a complex visual
field.
The basic problem with any Shakespearean films that the more
circumstances and scenery are made life-like and convincing, the less easy
it is to accept the convention of heightened, rhetorical, rhythmical
dialogue. (Brode, 2000, p.7)
26
In avoiding the use of the original dialogue, the essence of Shakespeare plays
would be lost, on the other hand, the dialogue seems, depending on the way it is being
used (to their visual correspondents), totally displaced, hardly matching the images
displayed. The adaptation should capture the essence of the original and employ the
cinematographic resources to achieve different results. As Brode identifies, what films
must seek is to “not only preserve the complexity of the Bard’s words but also present a
distinctive cinematic interpretation.” (Brode, 2000, p.8)
In theater the visual elements are, to a certain degree, static, therefore, it is the
dialogues that make the transition that characterize theater as an active medium: the
dialogues manipulate the story. Meanwhile, in film the “spatial disjunctions and the
consequent demand for visual re-orientation necessarily inhibit sophisticated complexity
of dialogue.” (Davies, 1988, p.3). The intrinsic characteristic of each medium must be
observed in any kind of adaptation. Film has its own language, distinguished,
fundamentally from theater, as discussed before, by its spatial capabilities. The cinematic
language speaks primarily through images, with the movement of the camera in relation
to its subject. Sometimes Shakespeare’s words are not necessary because the audience is
already being presented visual representations of the words, and the risk in the film
would be then to overlap them (images and words). Unlike theater, a medium restricted to
the limits of the stage, where the story is entirely presented in a microcosm, in film there
is a basic necessity to run away from staged compositions due to the “realist”
characteristic of the medium. On the other hand, “neither can it abandon that intrinsic
theatricality which beats in the heart of Shakespearean drama.” (Davies, 1988, p.184) Yet
27
a great problem persists, Shakespeare’s language, due to its complexity, intimidates, and
as so most filmmakers hesitate in operate in modification to the original.
C. Acting Performances in Shakespeare’s Films
Walter Benjamin observes that the performance of the stage actor is presented to
the public in person, while in film the performance is presented to the camera. This
means that the performance is not continuous, an integral composition: the actor’s
performance is a sequence of positional views, optical sets. Separated from the public,
“the film actor lacks the opportunity of the stage actor to adjust to the audience during his
performance,” (Benjamin, p.740) making the “audience’s identification with the actor…
an identification with the camera.” (Benjamin, p.740) The camera is substituting for the
public in this situation, “the aura that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the aura of
the figure it portrays.” (Benjamin, p.740) Another aspect discussed by Benjamin is that
the stage actor develops his performance, his character, as a whole, in an uninterrupted
sequence of time, while in film the actor is working in blocks, fragments, only linked at
the end of the process when the film is being edited. The film splits “the actor’s works
into a series of mountable episodes.” (Benjamin, p.741)
The fragmented work of the actor in the film is not an organic process as it is in
theater, “the relation of the actor to the frame and to the space within the frame is
constantly varied.” (Davies, 1988, p.171) In film, the actor’ performance not only needs
28
to suit a different order from the one of the play. In theater once a line is delivered there
is no opportunity for corrections, to make it again at that time, while in film the actor
perform the same lines until the director feels satisfied. In the theatrical space the actor
needs to manipulate the action with his/her lines, while in the cinematic space there is an
“equation between actor and inanimate object; spatial discontinuity; and spatial
proportion deployed within the cinema frame.” (Davies, 1988, p.172). Moreover, in film
the work of the director, that in theater is almost entirely devoted to the actors, must be
equally devoted to the camera, “the mediation between the machine and the human
actor.” (Davies, 1988, p.173)
In any film, the actor’s work is substantially changed from its theatrical
nature. The actor on the screen is part of a flat image, and as such, his
work contributes relatively small measure to the film’s composite method
of dramatic expression, which also comprises camera movement and the
editing of the film. (Davies, 1988, p.183)
In casting actors to Shakespearean films there was a tendency of some directors
“to cast well-established stage actors in the major roles, and often in all the roles.”
(Davies, 1988, p.168). Though, since filmmaking is a fragmentary process, such actors
may not suit their performances to the different medium, where the action is not
necessarily continuous and progressive.
29
D. From Theater to Film
“Who is the auteur? Is the dominant artist Shakespeare or his latest screen
adapter?,” (Brode, 2000, p.9) how far is the filmmaker’s work distant from Shakespeare?
“To what extent is he [or she] obliged to confine himself to being an interpreter?”
(Davies, 1988, p.3) In making a Shakespeare film the particularities of the medium must
be evident (that it is film and not theater). Although, it is important to identify the
authorship of the work. The adaptation has a different author, who is executing the
adaptation process and bringing an entire new interpretation. The adaptation is firstly a
script. The screenwriter and the director are the authors, or at least, co-authors of the film
piece.
The vision of Shakespeare’s individual’s plays, like the more seriousminded motion pictures today, results from two elements: the personality
of the artist himself and the overriding world view of the period during
which his work was created. (Brode, 2000, p.12)
A Shakespeare film must not be judged according to theatrical conventions. While
in theater dialogue and action are its strength, film uses images, dramatic style to present
the story. Theater works on a present relationship established between the actor and the
audience, and so the integration of verbal and visual elements must be differently
observed. Adapting Shakespeare to the screen requires an understanding of the intrinsic
differences between theater and film. To apply theatrical rules to produce a Shakespeare
30
film is a great mistake. The Elizabethan plays cannot be reproduced and received by the
audience in film as it was originally staged centuries ago. In film it must stress the
realistic characteristics of the film medium: to show things “as they are,” giving the
audience outer and inner worlds at the same time – in terms of places and humans
expressions as well.
This is the most popular kind of Shakespeare film, not merely because
filmmakers are most familiar with it and mass audiences enjoy the
spectacle of historical recreations, but because everyone senses that at
bottom Shakespeare is a realist. (Jack Jorgens in Shaugnessy, 1998, p.19)
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III. Romeo and Juliet
From all William Shakespeare’s plays, Romeo and Juliet is the most widely
adapted on film: “Romeo and Juliet has been filmed more often than any other play,
Shakespearean or otherwise.” (Brode, 2000, p.42) Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare
characters, are universal love symbols. “Any tale of teen romance, menaced by a hostile
world,” (Brode, 2000, p.59) and young lovers of enemy families (at any historical time)
are somehow a variation of the same Romeo and Juliet, because the audience is
essentially the same. The human nature, to which Shakespeare so perfectly translated into
words, did not change. Yet, according to Douglas Brode, with Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare would be warning his young audience of the mistake he had made.
Romeo and Juliet, widely misunderstood as a paeon to romantic love, is in
fact an anti-romantic cautionary fable. The role-model teenagers avoid
carnal consummation of their feelings until they’ve become loving friends
and their union has been blessed my the church (…). (Brode, 2000, p.13)
Romeo and Juliet has been adapted to film since 1908, according to a film index
organized by Keneth Rothwell in A History of Shakespeare on the Screen. The first
one was the 1908 Vitagraph production directed by Ranous, followed by the 1911 Italian
production of Savio (Film d’Arte Italiana),1 Noble’s 1916 (Metro), Edwards’ 1916 (Fox),
1
Douglas Brode, in Shakespeare in the Movies, 2000, p.42, states that Savio’s Romeo and Juliet was the
first film adaptation of the tale.
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Cukor’s/Thalberg’s 1936 (MGM), Castellani’s 1954 (Verona Productions), Ustinov’s
1961 (Universal/International), Drum’s 1966 (RADA), Zeffirelli’s 1968 (BHE/Dino De
Laurentiis), Bosner’s 1976 (St. George’s Playhouse), Messina’s/Rakoff’s 1978 (BBC
Shakespeare Plays), and Luhrmann’s 1996 (20th-Century Fox).
Prior to our penetration into the Shakespearean universe of Romeo and Juliet, a
basic notion of where this universe comes from might bring important contribution for
the overall understanding of Shakespeare film adaptations.
A. From Shakespeare Life
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford upon Avon England in 1564, and died
there in 1616. As a boy, Shakespeare was probably taught to reject natural impulses, he
was, apparently, a “model youth,” who “slipped once.”
Anne Hathaway, eight years Shakespeare’s senior, became pregnant,
perhaps during an afternoon’s dalliance with the lad. A hasty marriage was
followed, six months later, by the couple’s first child. Then rumors spread
that the child might not be Will’s; Anne might have been pregnant by
another when she met and seduced him. If so, such shame may be what
drove Will from Stratford to London – and, in good time, fame, fortune,
and immorality. His loss in life was our gain, resulting in the greatest body
of literary work ever produced. (Brode, 2000, p.12)
It is extremely important to consider the historical difference of the Elizabethan
audience, to whom Shakespeare was writing for, from today’s public. The physical space
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of the theater, about four centuries ago in England, was the typical Elizabethan public
playhouse: a circular, open-air building with a big platform stage partially covered by a
roof. The audience used to stand around the stage, in the yard around it or in the tiered
galleries that ran around the theater’s wall. In the 1590s the plays were performed by
men, and the actors depended more upon their own language and gesture than upon sets
and other stage decorations. Changes of scenes and places took place simultaneously and
immediately. Additionally, in the Elizabethan period of Shakespearean productions the
“anachronistic costumes and settings were the order of the day.” (Brode, 2000, p.13)
Most of the time the actors were responsible for their own costumes “and appeared on
stage, whatever the ostensible period, dressed as Elizabethans, adding an immediate
contemporary edge to old tales.” (Brode, 2000, p.13)
Meanings must be draw from the context in which they were written. Only a
contextual analysis of Shakespeare’s work can enable a successful adaptation to
contemporary societies, with effective visualizations of Shakespeare’s verbalizations
according to different perspectives.
Romeo and Juliet passed through many modifications since the first Shakespeare
version of the tale. Shakespeare’s “original” play was published in three different
versions: two quatro texts, 1597 and 1599, and a folio, 1623. (Holland, 2000, p.xxviii)
Katherine Wright in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in Performance argues that “the
many traditions of Shakespearean theatrical interpretations are not only reflective of the
various cultural milieux from which they emerge, but that they also build patterns of
34
meaning.” (Wright, 1997, p.iii) The adaptations must find the taste of the generation they
want to speak with. Romeo and Juliet adaptations have proliferated, reshaped for
different audiences, staged and performed very differently along the last four centuries, as
part of its vital process. Even in the beginning Shakespeare’s performances of the play
Chamberlain’s Men may have presented considerable differences: “obviously all plays
change in theater, influenced by the responses of actors and audiences to the text.”
(Levenson, 2000, p.69)
Shakespeare wrote his play during the Elizabethan period. But along the years it
has been performed quite differently. To mention some examples, according to Jill
Levenson, the first adapted version of Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet in the theater took
place during the reign of Charles II, in 1662, followed by the ones of Thomas Otway,
1680, Theophilus Cibber, 1744, David Garrick, 1748, which figures as the “longestrunning version in the theater history,” (Levenson, 2000, p.75) and Charlotte Cushman,
1845. Other major versions after Cushman listed by the author are Edwin Booth, 1868,
Henry Irving, 1882, Mary Anderson, 1884, Maude Adams, 1899, and John Gielgud,
1935. Besides those, “two later revivals can be singled out from the crowd for their
originality influence: Peter Brook’s for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1947 and
Franco Zeffirelli’s for the Old Vic in 1960, a version reworked in his popular film of
1968.” (Levenson, 2000, p.87)
English language performances may cut many lines, as much as two-thirds
of the text, to communicate the narrative through contemporary actors to
contemporary audiences, Whatever the medium, however, adaptation
35
allows the familiar narrative to proceed with its cultural work. (Levenson,
2000, p.96)
B. Popularizing Shakespeare
According to Kenneth Rothwell in A History of Shakespeare on Screen, “the
challenge to auteurial ingenuity” in imagining Shakespeare’s words in moving images
“began in September 1899, when William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson, an early collaborator
with Thomas Edison, teamed up with actor/director Sir Herbert Beerbohm to film
excerpts from King John, then playing at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London. (Rothwell,
1999, p.1)
Adaptations of Shakespeare in film are almost as old as the medium, and the first
film adaptations of Shakespeare, different from the latter productions, were only attempts
to reproduce Shakespeare plays on the screen as they were on the stage. According to
Michael Anderegg in Film Adaptation, Shakespeare film adaptations were even more
common during the silent era, and then “Shakespeare without words…did not seem to be
a contradiction in terms.” (Michael Anderegg in Naremore, 2000, p.155) A Midsummer
Night’s Dream directed by Dieterle/Reinhardt in 1935 (Warner Bros.), was the first major
Shakespearean film of the sound era.
Shakespeare was still seen as somehow balanced between popularity and
propriety; or perhaps the filmmakers believed they were reproducing the
original conditions of the theater as a social institution in Shakespeare’s
time: something for the groundlings and something for the “better sort.”
36
The film was, in any case, promoted as a “class act” at the same time that
Warner undoubtedly hoped for a popular success. (Michael Anderegg in
Naremore, 2000, p.156)
One year after Warner released A Midsummer Night’s Dream, MGM released
Romeo and Juliet. Nevertheless, their commercial failure stagnated the Hollywood
production of Shakespearean films – at least for the next decade.
Most of the critic was restrict to a good or bad concept based on fidelity,
but if there is any valuable discussion on that it is not strictly in these
terms but in how economic priorities of the film industry affected the
integrity of Shakespeare’s art. (Shaugnessy, 1998, p.3)
Besides the issue of fidelity, adapting Shakespeare had become a critical
discussion commonly narrowed to a combat between purists and popularizers.
Shakespeare films are, undoubtedly, fulfilling a role that the dramatized versions could
not. Speaking another language for a different taste, film turned Shakespeare’s plays into
accessible art to popular audiences. Film reaches a much wider audience, it gives “the
presentation an authority which is alien to the theatre.” (Davies, 1988, p.4)
A wide variety of cinematic versions, treatments, adaptations of, and
borrowings from Shakespeare’s plays have been part of the film industry’s
stock-in-trade from its earliest days (...). (Shaugnessy, 1998, p.2)
The word popular must not implicate in any kind of depreciation to Shakespeare
film. Such indication relates directly to mass reproduction of art works, but in talking
about Shakespeare it also demonstrates an effort for contextual adaptation in bringing the
Shakespearean drama closer to the reality, the world of the spectator – and there is
nothing wrong with that. Shakespeare, himself, borrowed, used, re-worked and created
37
from an international body of literature, specially the Italian and Roman, and from his
political context as well. “At any given historical moment we are working within a
certain range of academically and culturally possible and acceptable interpretations.” (Ivo
Kamps in Desmet and Sawyer, 1999, p.24)
I applaud the desire to popularize Shakespeare, to introduce him to a mass
audience to prove the stories, characters and language can be extremely
entertaining and accessible. What makes him such a genius is the many
layers to his work – his ability to be insightful, moving and profound,
while entertaining at the same time. Given that so many people now
regard him as the province of academics, I think it’s important to reclaim
him as a popular artist. (Oliver Parker in Cineaste, 1998, v.24, p.54)
Popularizing Shakespeare has its problems. The persona, William Shakespeare
evokes strong feelings of devotion and respect to his artistic geniality. The Bard belongs
to a high-class artistical status. Working with a Shakespeare play the filmmaker also is
dealing with its aura – Shakespeare plays as “sacred” art pieces. Shakespeare’s name
legitimizes productions in different media. The “presence” of his name is extremely
important, it authorizes the Hollywood film as a Shakespearean work – “on the back of
the box of Kenneth Branagh’s production of Hamlet, the film is advertised as
‘Shakespeare’s greatest creation in its entirety’.” (Ivo Kamps in Desmet and Sawyer,
1999, p.22)
Popularizing Shakespeare is a process that goes beyond adaptation. In the context
of Hollywood it also becomes part of the entertainment business, and it must respond to
the commercial implications of this business. Casting, under popular requirements, obeys,
indistinctly, the same pattern of any other film production: satisfy the youth audience. In
38
the case of Romeo and Juliet this necessity turns to be an easy task, as the young age is a
demand of the play (and young and beautiful stars are most of what the spectator is
looking for). However, a serious issue arises from this necessity (or literal requirement of
young-age protagonists): can young American idols present qualified, efficient,
performances at the Shakespearean lines? As it is still going to be discussed along this
work, the acting performances of Romeo and Juliet as happen in Franco Zeffirelli’s
Romeo and Juliet and in Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet can
perhaps be addressed as the most fragile point of these films. The leading actors respect
the truth of the Shakespearean text in terms of age, but the toneless speech of these actors
in delivering the Shakespearean lines considerably damages the flashing and innovative
approach of both films. Yet, such a fact was certainly not a problem for the vast part of
the young audience who went to the movie-theaters to see these young protagonists,
despite the quality of their performances.
Regardless of an actor’s formal training, or the lack of it, the simple
answer is whatever makes a particular production at a particular moment
in time work for that particular audience ‘right.’ (Baz Luhrmann in
Cineaste, 1998, v.24, p.48)
Despite satisfactory market performances on the stage and in the many films for
video rental (mostly used in schools to introduce Shakespeare to students), it is on the big
screen that Shakespeare’s work achieves greater repercussion. Commercial successes,
effectively penetrating the American market (and consequently the world market), as
Baz Lurmann’s Romeo and Juliet 1996 box-office success urge a more careful analysis.
Gary Taylor in Shakespeare and Appropriation states that the young-stars were the
ones who actually made the films commercial successes. Taylor says that Leonardo Di
39
Caprio and Claire Danes, Luhrmann’s lead actors, had considerable recognition within
the youth audience to attract the mass of spectators who went to see these teen idols on
the screen. Zeffirelli’s actors, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, however, as young as
Luhrmann’s leading actors, were unknown to the public, but attracted, proportionally at
the time, the same mass of spectators as well. Baz Luhrmann’s commercial merits are not
only in his choice for young, pretty actors/actress, but in effectively giving the film a
MTV rhythm. It bounds perfectly for the young generation images and a powerful rock
soundtrack. The way sound and images were put together stresses the original character
of this work, which talks specifically with this end-of-the-century generation. With such
an approach the film was a great entertainment (at least for this generation), as
Shakespeare was at his time.
Shakespeare’s theatre was directly or consciously concerned not with the
production of literary masterpieces but rather with the production and
staging of exciting, entertaining and thought-provoking plays that were
thought of primarily as a form of cultural interaction between players and
audiences in a theatre. The now revered canon of Shakespeare’s writings
was in a sense a by-product of his main professional business.
(Holderness, 1990, p.52)
Many critics of Shakespeare film observe that if the Bard was alive today, he
would be active in the movies and the television business. He was a very contemporary
man connected with his audience, and attempted to reach as many people as possible.
Shakespeare worked to achieve commercial success, to penetrate the mind and the heart
of his audience, he aimed to be popular, it was for popular audiences that he wrote for,
therefore, putting Shakespeare in a “high culture status” might seem a contradiction when
assumed the true finality of his writings.
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C. Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare
Within this framework of public life Romeo and Juliet act out their brief
tragedy: in the first act they meet and declare their love – in another
sonnet; in the second they arrange to marry in secret; in the third, after
Romeo’s banishment, they consummate their marriage and part; in the
fourth, Juliet drinks a sleeping draught prepared by Friar Laurence so that
she may escape marriage to Paris and, after waking in the family tomb,
run off with Romeo; in the fifth, after Romeo, believing her to be dead,
has taken poison, she stabs herself to death. (Introduction by Stanley
Wells for Romeo and Juliet in The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete
Works, 1998, p.335)
By late 1594, William Shakespeare, with his history plays and comedies, was
competing in popularity with the works of Robert Greene and Thomas Kid. “Still, no one
compared him to the brilliant Christopher Marlowe.”(Brode, 2000, p.41). From 1591 to
1593 a plague was sweeping London and Shakespeare temporarily abandoned theater.
During this time he composed epic poems. Coming back to London after this period he
started to write his tragedies. In the summer of 1595 many riots were taking place in
London over food prices. By the 26th of June, according to Park Honan in Shakespeare a
Life, “Shakespeare had lost his means of livelihood.”(Honan, 1998, p.207)
By then the Rose [playhouse] had shut…Shakespeare prepared Romeo and
Juliet for a tense city, and his tragedy reflects the civic tension and
obtuseness that make violence endemic in life. (Honan, 1998, p.207)
Philip Kolin, in his Romeo and Juliet book, observes variants on the theme of
Romeo and Juliet can be found in the early Greek and Roman literature, but it was only
with “Masuccio Salernitano’s thirty-third short story, or, novella,” (Kolin, 1992, p.12)
41
that it received a unique and modern rendition, to then pass through the Giulietta and
Romeo of Luigi DaPorto and accomplish a definitive form with Matteo Bandello - with
the story of the “tragic victims, a normal boy and girl destroyed by their total lack of
power.” (Brode, 2000, p.41) Nevertheless, the tale was immortalized by William
Shakespeare. In 1594 when Shakespeare wrote his “star-crossed lovers,” he was said to
have composed based it on a narrative poem he had recently read called The Tragical
Historye of Romeo and Juliet, by Arthur Brooke, a 1562 volume of English poetry. To
this days Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has undergone considerable adaptations in its
written form since its first publication in 1597, which was brought with the following
statement on its title page: “An excellent conceited Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet. As it
hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely, by the right Honourable the L. of
Hudson his Seruants. London, Printed by Iohn Danter.” (in Halio, 1998, p.1)
Regarding conventions, Shakespeare changed many theatrical traditions with
Romeo and Juliet. He instituted a new genre which gathers tragedy, comedy and sonnet
in a unique arrangement, bringing also new artistic and contextual interpretations to his
work. As Jill Levenson states in Romeo and Juliet, there were many similarities in the
structure of the Elizabethan tragedy and comedy, as the narrative is developed, and with
his Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare “blended essences of two favorite genres [and] bear
the impress of a third kind, the sonnet sequence.” (Levenson, 2000, p.52) The opening
sonnet indicates, through its literary and dramatic customs, the tragedy of the star-crossed
lovers “based on a familiar narrative and expressed through love-poetry,” (Levenson,
2000, p.43) while the first following actions of the play express a comic tone which
42
contradicts the pronounced tragic genre. Above all, in breaking and appropriating
conventions, Shakespeare was finding a way to adapt his work for an art until then
restricted to the aristocracy.
Shakespeare, like any other artist, expressed his visions about the material he had
found through the particular conditions of a specific medium. He created his Romeo and
Juliet as an adaptation. Contextual adaptations in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to his
English “reality” can be identified, for example, in the dressing of the characters, and in
having the rival families Montagues and Capulets actually representing the Houses of
Lancaster and York.
At Shakespeare’s time, Chorus used to deliver prologues in the form of a sonnet:
a fourteen-line poem usually devoted to love themes. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
begins with the sonnet being read in public, and speaks not of love but of civil conflicts.
The tragedy is set in the Italian city of Verona, in a social background of riots. The
society is rigid divided, and disturbed by the hate between two households: Montagues
and Capulets.
Romeo and Juliet is a comedy that becomes a tragedy, and the transition in genre
is made with the death of one of its characters, Mercutio. The “star-crossed lovers,” as the
Prologue announces, “young and in love and defiant obstacles, are attuned to the basic
movement of the comic game toward social regeneration.” (Susan Snyder in Andrew,
1993, p.74) The regeneration never occurs. The “star-crossed lovers” become victims of
43
their love, and the society does not show any advance toward a solution for its problems:
was then the tragedy worth lesson? The final reconciliation between the two households
does not represent an actual change for the social environment. The tensions regarding
masculinity, patriarchal authority, female sexuality, troubled political, social and
domestic relations presented in the play, are not solved.
As it can be observed, Mercutio contains much of the comic elements of the play
– speaking, moving, playing around: “speech for him is a constant play on multiple
possibilities.” (Susan Snyder in Andrew, 1993, p.76) Mercutio is a very often discussed
character of the play. Besides his determinant presence in marking the change in genres
of the play, his Queen Mab speech is a famous passage in which lay many interpretations.
Mercutio becomes, for the first time, a prose speaker in whose angry wit a
hostility to love hypostatizes into a hostility to women…It is only at this
point that Shakespeare invents Mercutio’s interest in duelling. Mercutio’s
attachment to Romeo now becomes a mad possessive jealously; he urges
Romeo to repudiate love, romance, and womanhood in terms that are both
mean and brutish. (Porter, 1997, p.121)
The Nurse also carries the comic spirit of the play (but in a less sophisticated level
than Mercutio does). The Nurse and Mercutio, at the first part of the story (until the death
of Mercutio) are permanently competing with Romeo and Juliet for the audience’s
attention. Despite these two supporting roles mentioned above, another remarking role is
the one of the Friar, who, in the story, is related to Romeo as the Nurse is related to Juliet.
Shakespeare’s Friar exists in the context of a society very hostile to the Catholic church
(a common feeling in the late-sixteenth century England).
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Elizabethan audience watching Romeo and Juliet was conditioned by
years of political propaganda from pulpit, stage, and published works to
recognize in Roman Catholic sentiment a political threat to England and
to the Reformation. They may have been far more skeptical of
Shakespeare’s Friar than a modern audience distanced from religious
conflict of the post-Reformation period. (Roberts, 1998, p.80)
In this play of constant extremes, love and death, youth and age, night and day,
dark and light, and of a very violent teenage environment, most of the critics raise the
question whether it is a tragedy of character or circumstances. Perhaps, it is only the
balance of the two, which Shakespeare’s geniality could bring about with equal and
transcendent power. His interpretation for the tale turned it into an universal and
everlasting story. The play talks about adolescents trying to grow up, confronting parents,
finding love, sex – adolescent conflicts that are still the same today. We could say then
that this is a story that speaks, primarily to young people, and about the conflict of
generations.
Romeo and Juliet’s indulgence in romance and their impatience not simply
to marry but to consummate their marriage (have sex) could thus have
evoked stereotypes of youthful lust, rashness, and folly to an Elizabethan
audience. (Roberts, 1998, p.17)
Romeo and Juliet is a story of many versions, dependent on different
interpretations, on the emphasis that is given to it, how it is contextualized: “every
performance, every production, of Romeo and Juliet is an act of interpretation more or
less liberal in its approach to the text (…).” (Holderness, 1990, p.31) The story goes
beyond its last page evoking new readings. The complexity of Shakespeare’s words
allows different interpretations depending on how the words put together are understood.
The historical background and the English language, as it was used within the Bard’s
45
society, gives one a complete different reading from the play than one who ignores such
elements on which the story was composed. For someone who studies Shakespeare, his
context and his language, Romeo and Juliet might reveal much more aspects of the
society the Bard was writing for and about. Anyone who reads the play does so supported
by different knowledge, a different experience, and the result of such process naturally
varies from person to person.
The tale of the star-crossed lovers was already a popular story before Shakespeare
adapted it, and it might remain popular in its remarkable poetic appeal to young
audiences. Despite changes, mutations, shifts in time and pace, emphasis, readings,
Shakespeare survives in the “intelligence, eloquence, dramatic verve and linguistic
complexity” (Watts, 1991, xv) of his work, timeless in content and form. The play
remains figuring as valuable material for the society and for artists, “as Shakespeare
diversely appropriated and exploited his sources, so he in turn becomes the subject of
diverse cultural appropriation and exploitation.” (Watts, 1991, xv) The tale will be kept
alive because it reveals ignored truths about our existence that did not change along the
centuries, “it is not what you are that counts, but the world you live in.” (Susan Snyder in
Andrew, 1993, p.82)
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D. Romeo and Juliet Film Adaptations
Irving Thalberg and George Cukor’s 1936 Romeo and Juliet starts with “oldfashioned” credits showing the actors in cameo frames, the prologue, the Verona’s
cathedral square, and then “the stylized, geometrical, movements of the opposing houses
of Montague and Capulet (…). (Rothwell, 1999, p.41) Shakespeare’s words were kept in
their integrity in the film dialogues (in an excessive fidelity to the play). The leading
actors of the film are not young as Shakespeare wrote in his play. In “the impossibility of
finding adolescent actors with the dramatic talent to play Romeo and Juliet,” George
Cukor and Irving Thalberg, cast the matinee idols like Norma Shearer and Leslie
Howard, already in his forties to play the leading roles.
The dialectical structure of Romeo and Juliet with its deeply embedded
antithesis between light and dark, womb and tomb, youth and age, love
and death lent itself admirably to the cinematic style of George Cukor and
the classical Hollywood film. Romeo hints at this rhetorical strategy when
listing his oxymoron of “bright smoke,” “cold fire,” “sick healthy,” and
the “ancient grudge” between Montagues and Capulets sets thesis against
antithesis in a clash of opposites. The visual equivalents emerge on screen
through parallel editing and montage that reflect the alternate surges of
subversion and containment wrenching Verona ruled by reason, and the
montage and random cuts become metaphors for overwhelming passion.
(Rothwell, 1999, p.40)
Castellani’s 1954 Romeo and Juliet, lauded in Italy, winner of the Grand Prize at
the Venice Film Festival, was the first Romeo and Juliet films to attempt to approximated
the characters’ age to the characters’ age of the play. British actor Laurence Harvey was
chosen to play Romeo. He was twenty-five at the time (at this time, after James Dean’s
death, Harvey was replacing Dean in most of the films he was schedule to appear). Susan
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Shentall, Harvey’s costar, was nineteen. Castellani’s adaptation exhibited an acclaimed
photography of Italian sets. Shooting in different locations of Italy to compose his
Verona, Castellani’s Romeo and Juliet emerged as “a quintessential distillation of High
Renaissance style, offering an entire era as immortalized in its art and architecture,”
(Brode, 2000, p.49) the Italian art, its paintings and sculptures assemble a splendid visual
composition. Castellani’s film represented a new “post-Olivier wave.” The camera was
no longer restricted to the theatrical traditions (giving the play on the screen), the director
was truly attempting to translate Shakespeare’s text according to cinematic rules. He felt
free to make a film based on a film script, modified from the original play: cut and/or add
material. Like Shakespeare, who transcended his sources to create his Romeo and Juliet,
from literary work to a play (from Italian novelle to Elizabethan play), so did Castellani
as an auteur adapting the play to a different medium.
Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 Romeo and Juliet was not only a box office success, but
was a “masterpiece of intricately choreographed music, poetry, and photography”
(Rothwell, 1999, p.133) as well. Zeffirelli cleverly spoke with his audience through
emotions, bringing the public closer to what could be said to be the real “spirit” of
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Zeffirelli showed how Shakespeare was actually
“possible” in cinema, that the screen was also a legitimate place for Shakespearean
stories.
Castellani and Zeffirelli… re-situate Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in an
ambiance that their creator could only have imagined. A complicated
combination of lighter camera equipment, the post-war influence of
“cinema verité,” the waning of the once powerful Hollywood studio
system, and currency and laws affecting American money in European
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banks made possible the abandonment of the sound stages for the realism
of Europeans streets. (Rothwell, 1999, p.125)
Robert Hapgood states in Shakespeare, the Movie, Zeffirelli declared himself a
popularizer who would bring the mythical-intellectual-restricted Shakespeare for the
enjoyment of ordinary people- and his Romeo and Juliet was truly, as he intended it to be,
the most successful, artistically and commercially Shakespearean adaptation until then.
In a sense Shakespeare himself was not only a popular artist but also a
popularizer. For a largely illiterate audience he transferred from page to
stage and from narrative to drama some of the central writings of his time.
(Robert Hapgood in Boose and Burt, 1997, p.80)
Zeffirelli did the translation, the adaptation of languages, acting as a free
interpreter of Shakespeare, exploring the capabilities of the film medium, but keeping
certain fidelity to Shakespeare, although many lines of the play were eliminated (at least
one third of it, the remaining lines in the film were literally extracted from the play).
Regarding the language liberties taken by Zeffirelli, cutting parts of the dialogue from the
play, Robert Hapgood says that the Italian director “takes the fact that English is for him
a second language as a license to start with the story, which communicates in any
language, and to keep his emphasis there.” (Robert Hapgood in Boose and Burt, 1997,
p.85) Zeffirelli in his auto biography tells us that he was seeking to give his spectator the
possibility to identify him/herself on the screen, in order to make the general audience
“understand that the classics are living flesh.” (Zeffirelli, 1986, p. 252)
Zeffirelli keeps Shakespeare’s spoken language (with additions, cuts and
displacements) and uses a 14 year-old actress to play the role of Juliet (the age
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Shakespeare wrote for her). Yet, he composes a Romeo and Juliet to be showed to his
contemporary culture, based on his personal interpretation of the Shakespeare tale. For
instance, “Romeo and Juliet’s love-making in the film was appropriately more physical
than Shakespeare’s circumstances permitted.” (Robert Hapgood in Boose and Burt, 1997,
p.83) Additionally, pushing the element of discovery, originality, to an extreme, Zeffirelli
“choose then unknowns for the leading roles.”(Robert Hapgood in Boose and Burt, 1997,
p.83) In his motion picture process of “audience-involving,” Robert Hapgood comments
that Zeffirelli expresses perfectly in the cinematic form “the wonderful richness of
Shakespeare’s words, their Renaissance copiousness and plenitude” (Robert Hapgood in
Boose and Burt, 1997, p.83) in motion pictures. Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet has its
merits as a film, dictating its own natural rhythm, avoiding the chances to be a faithful
recreation of the theatrical work, of the written descriptions designed for the stage.
Zeffirelli created an adaptation as a progressive, original, act per se. “In every way the
film represents a happy conjunction of play, medium, style, cast, audience, and cultural
moment,” (Robert Hapgood in Boose and Burt, 1997, p.83) a possibility to transcend the
Shakespearean moments, to present the story under a different context, a particular
perspective.
Zeffirelli composed his Verona from different Italian towns. In his careful choice
to set the story in different locations, Zeffirelli, as set designer, could draw from these
places a vivid energy which turned them into real and essential characters of the movie:
the beauty of the landscape and of the actors/actress replaces Shakespeare’s words very
efficiently in several moments. The effectiveness of the visual composition of the film
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compensates any possible gaps of time and space. The coherence of the images
juxtaposed, the narrative structure of the film, fulfill the several subtractions from
Shakespeare’s play that could affect the overall comprehension of the story. “The
expectation that the drama of the cinema should bear a close relation to events in real life
remained powerful, and it became important that the appearance of a screen character
should be authentic.”(Davies, 1988, p.167)
As James Loehlin observes in Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Siècle edited by Mark
Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray, Baz Luhrmann 1996 William Shakespeare’s Romeo
+ Juliet is a fin-de-siècle spectacle. Baz Luhrmann is an Australian director who
produced many music videos – a style clearly reflected in his Shakespeare film, in which
the almost five hundred years-old Shakespeare play is placed in our contemporary,
capitalist, world, depicting a diverse, multiracial society. This is a society where wealthy
and poverty, “normal” and “perturbed” habitants share their living under the control of
police helicopters and riot squads. This is Luhrmann’s chaotic world, set in Verona
Beach, Cuban-American community. Whereas Zeffirelli sets his film “in an Italian hill
town for the constructed world of a never-never land of Verona,” (Rothwell, 1999, p.241)
Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, “partly filmed in Mexico City, …is placeless in many
ways as the set for a sci-fi movie.” (Rothwell, 1999, p.241). William Shakespeare’s
Romeo + Juliet however brings the same timeless tragedy of the “star-crossed lovers,”
teenager-lovers who struggle against “the corrupt values of their parents and so fall
victim to a violent and uncaring society.” (James Loehlin in Burnett and Wray, 2000,
p.122)
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Social organization is a strange amalgam of late-model capitalism,
Catholicism and feudalism: the smoggy shy line is dominated by a
monumental statue of Christ flanked by the skyscrapers of the Capulet and
Montague empires. The rival families are powerful factions whose
members drive flashy cars… and carry high-tech side arms marked with
the family crests. (James Loehlin in Burnett and Wray, 2000, p.122)
Luhrmann’s 1996 William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet is the Romeo and Juliet
of the generation-X, according to Rothwell a “stodgy” one if compared to Zeffirelli’s: “it
has been filtered through John Woo’s Hong Kong action movies, and the hiphop and
gangster rap of MTV, yet the characters speak in Elizabethan English.” (Rothwell, 1999,
p.241). In Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, as happened in Zeffirelli’s, many lines of the
dialogue from the original play are eliminated, or appear in new contexts, however,
according to Rothwell, in Luhrmann’s film these dialogue modifications ran against the
visual elements of the film. Douglas Brode notes that Luhrmann studied Zeffirelli’s
version and retained most of its carefully cut script, “Luhrmann updated the setting
(though not the dialogue) to a gang-banger milieu: Verona Beach, Florida.” (Brode, 2000,
p.56)
There is absolutely nothing new in putting Shakespeare in modern dress
but dressing him in the jeans and T-shirts and pierced bodies of the MTV
generation ratchets the transgressiveness up a notch. (Rothwell, 1999,
p.241)
Like Zeffirelli’s, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet was also a box-office
success, even greater than the earlier production for a while. Both films take advantage of
being adaptations which only employed the most relevant bits of Shakespeare’s story. In
terms of adaptation, as a contextual interpretation, once again it is important to remember
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that the play itself is an adaptation. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet presents the
fifteenth-century “fair Verona” from an Elizabethan point of view. And like Shakespeare,
Zeffirelli and Luhrmann show their own views. While Zeffirelli observes very carefully
the Renaissance’s costumes, Luhrmann’s story takes place in a modern Miami, with “hiphop variations.” (Brode, 2000, p.14)
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet settings, according to Luhrmann, were
built from his encounter with very contemporary elements, and Shakespeare language
became the street rap, spoken tone, of urban gangs. Nevertheless, Luhrmann’s movie was
extensively criticized. Thomas Pendleton, in the article “Shakespeare…with Additional
Dialog” in Cineaste, comments that despite the contemporary commitment of Luhrmann
in this film, the non-stop rock music of the movie is “an extremely unintelligent work,
and the fidelity to Shakespeare’s language is often accompanied by ignorance about the
language (…),” (Thomas Pendleton in Cineaste, 1998, v.24, p.66), and he explains his
point with the example of the Police Captain who is called “Prince” in the film, yet what
we see is not the Prince but the Police Captain-Prince - “the images and the words are
continually at odds – contra-Shakespeare.” (Thomas Pendleton in Cineaste, 1998, v.24,
p.66) Zeffirelli, commenting on Luhrmann’s film, observes that William Shakespeare’s
Romeo + Juliet was not a real update to the play, “it just made a big joke out of it to be
digested by the young audience.” (Franco Zeffirelli in Cineaste, 1998, v.24, p. 54). Sir
Peter Hall, in the same article to Cineaste, addresses that, despite the fact that Baz
Luhrmann’s film introduced Romeo and Juliet to a considerable number of people, the
cinematic version has not much in common with the theatrical version. Finally, Douglas
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Brode states that the film has only “one truly great moment,” and it regards the editing of
the couple’s final scene: “the timing is simply devastating… Such impact is impossible
on stage, where sudden editing to extreme close-ups does not exist (…).” (Brode, 2000,
p.58)
Baz Luhrmann, in the article “Shakespeare in the Cinema: A Film Director’s
Symposium” for the Cineaste observes that his adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and
Juliet avoids to change and to add words from the play, aiming to keep the colour and
taste of the Bard’s language to reveal “his lyrical, romantic, sweet, sexy, musical, violent,
rude, rough, rowdy, rambunctious storytelling.” (Baz Luhrmann in Cineaste, 1998, v.24,
p.47) Luhrmann believes, above all, in the rhythm and musicality of the Shakespeare
play, which he attempt to keep, under different circumstances, in the world he created on
the screen, having the pace dictated by pop-music. Liberties were taken in restructuring
and cutting, in order to keep the attention of the audience, “a very noisy, disparate,
savage yet honest audience,” (Baz Luhrmann in Cineaste, 1998, v.24, p.47) as was
Shakespeare’s audience more than four hundred years ago, believes Luhrmann.
Most of the criticisms concerning the film, positive or negative, stress the MTVstyle of the film. This Generation-X movie constituted of “hip-hop music played loudly
and incessantly.” (Brode, 2000, p.56) William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet is a film of
intense camera movements, fast editing and rock music soundtrack, a “intoxicating fun of
violence… [in a] spectacle staged for our pleasure” (James Loehlin in Burnett and Wray,
2000, p.126): hand-held shots, zooms pans, alternate film speeds, jump cuts and
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unnatural saturation of color are some of the technical devices that bring us the visual
tone of this ultimate popular expression of Romeo and Juliet at the end of the twentiethcentury popular culture. The opening sequence exemplifies “the film’s intertextual
allusiveness: its combination of parody and bardolatry nicely encapsulates Luhrmann’s
ambivalent attitude towards his sources.” (James Loehlin in Burnett and Wray, 2000,
p.125)
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet continually and painfully
juxtaposes contemporary kitsch with the high-culture world of
Shakespeare, classical music and Renaissance art and architecture. (James
Loehlin in Burnett and Wray, 2000, p.124)
Regardless of its teen-filmic-ambiance and its hip-hop approach, William
Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet can be considered the most reactionary of the Romeo and
Juliet films, vastly emphasizing the religious elements apparently intended by
Shakespeare for this play. Religious icons (crosses, Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, and other
saints) are always surrounding and reaffirming the love of Romeo and Juliet.
Many borrowings made by Luhrmann come from Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet:
the camera angle, lighting and mood of the balcony scene and the bed scene-bodies of the
lovers are examples of that. Zeffirelli’s version of Romeo and Juliet focuses however “on
the final reconciliation of the two households, who walk together in a moving and orderly
funeral procession.” (James Loehlin in Burnett and Wray, 2000, p.129) The tragedy bears
a hope for a better future, while Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet is the story of a generation
that cannot even see the future, the tragedy of the lovers brings no resolution. In the
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postmodern world of Verona Beach “there is no refuge for the lovers, even in romantic
death (…). (James Loehlin in Burnett and Wray, 2000, p.130)
They, [Romeo and Juliet], become merely another lurid image for a
media-besotted culture, body-bagged victims in a grainy video, as the film
returns to the newscast framework of the opening. The bland anchorman
recites the closing words of the epilogue, then moves on to the next story
as the TV screen dissolves in static snow. (James Loehlin in Burnett and
Wray, 2000, p.130)
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet is a reinvention of the Shakespeare tale at
the end of a millennium. It is a recontextualization based on a set of new social relations
and new media modes: “the nostalgia with which Luhrmann enshrouds his Romeo and
Juliet inevitably gives way to the violent and media-crazed culture of which they are,
necessarily, already a part.” (James Loehlin in Burnett and Wray, 2000, p.133)
Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, is
necessarily a central text for any consideration of Shakespearean
filmmaking at the millennium. Of all the Shakespeare film releases of the
1990s, it is the one most obviously oriented toward a twenty-first century.
Along with its effective plundering of youth culture and its aggressive
marketing toward a teenage audience, it employs post-modern aesthetic
strategies that set it off from the substantial body of teen-star-crossedlovers films from which it derives. (James Loehlin in Burnett and Wray,
2000, p.121)
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IV. Analysis of the Films
The lines below are not exhaustive descriptions of Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and
Juliet and Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. They attempt to
delineate some of the choices of these two directors in telling the tragic tale of Romeo
and Juliet, including their suppressions and occasional additions to Shakespeare’s lines.
These short descriptions might also compare these films to each other, their particular
interpretations of one story, these two different readings which resulted in two different
films.
A. Romeo and Juliet, by Franco Zeffirelli
A sunrise light illuminates the beginning of a flight over Franco Zeffirelli’s fair
Verona, accompanied by the original Shakespeare prologue read by a male voice-over –
omitting the three last lines (“is now of the two hours traffic of our stage. The which if
you with patient ears attend, what here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend”).
Zeffirelli’s action actually begins in the central plaza of the city. The crowd is at the
market where we soon are introduced to the Capulet’s servicemen, Gregory and Samson,
dressed in yellow and red suits. Most of the initial part of Shakespeare’s dialogue is
absent. “Here comes the of the house of Montagues,” says Gregory to Samson, and the
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latter bites his thumb at Abraham, a Montague serviceman, dressed in a blue and green
suit, who had just arrived on the scene. As the Montague attempts to move away from a
conflict the Capulet serviceman, who had bitten his thumb, pushes him and the fight
starts. The battle is briefly interrupted with the arrival of Tybalt, who, noticing the
conflict, put up his sword and restarts the riot. The disturbance initiated by the
servicemen spreads, and all citizens present to the central plaza are involved in the
conflict. Montague arrives on the scene asking his wife for his sword in order to join the
riot as well. The bells jingle, people run in different directions, they are also fighting
among themselves, throwing objects against each other. Someone warns: “the Prince is
coming.” Riding his horse, the Prince arrives to halt the disturbed society, calling for
peace between the two households, Montagues and Capulets.
Leaving the riot sequence, Montague walks through Verona with his wife and
Benvolio. They say nothing about the just occurred riot (as in the play). Romeo walks
through the narrow paths of fair Verona holding a flower in his hands. As he sits in a
corner with a sad look, Benvolio approaches him: “good morrow, cousin.” And they
proceed in a shorter version of the original dialogue.
In the Capulet house Paris and Capulet discuss about the age of the fourteenyears-old Juliet and her readiness for matrimony: “but now, my lord: what say you to my
suit?” asks Paris. Capulet only speaks a few lines about her daughter and uses the
opportunity mainly to invite Paris to the old-accustomed feast he is holding that coming
night. In the same sequence, Lady Capulet calls for her daughter. In Lady Capulet’s
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room, she and the Nurse, a fool-like and non-stop talking character, tries to persuade
Juliet about her already enough age to think about marriage.
It is night, outside the Capulet limits, Mercutio holds a fire torch which
illuminates his face. This clown-like and speaking-loud character, meets the Montagues
to the Capulet’s party. As they talk and move, Mercutio becomes a shadow in a blue
lighting background to state his Queen Mab speech in its entirety. The scene ends with
dialogue between Mercutio and Romeo in close-up as Romeo asks the men in his
company to “direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.” Then, all of them put on their masks
and follow to the Capulet party.
Romeo is at the ball. He first stares at Rosaline, but is suddenly surprised by a
never seen “beauty:” Juliet. Tybalt recognizes Romeo at the party. He reports the fact to
his uncle, Capulet, who has an appointment with other men. Capulet claims for peace,
prohibiting Tybalt to start any kind of riot in his feast. At this moment Lady Capulet calls
the crowd for the “Maresca” (in a creation of Zeffirelli), and the guests bound to dance,
spinning in choreographed movements. Juliet becomes aware of Romeo’s attention and
leaves the dance. The most evident musical opportunity in the play takes place in this
ball, and it is made similar in the film. Zeffirelli uses the song “What Is a Youth?” to
underscore the first dialogue between the star-crossed lovers: during the performance of
this song Juliet attempts to run away from Romeo through the crowd, but he surprises
her, kissing her hand, and then the love-at-first-sight conversation actually takes place,
preserving most of Shakespeare’s dialogue. As Juliet is called by the Nurse and leaves,
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Romeo still has time to ask the Nurse who Juliet is. He finds out that she is a Capulet.
Juliet also needs to know who her love is, and she also asks the Nurse about him. But, to
answer Juliet’s question the Nurse goes to Tybalt, in an action added by Zeffirelli.
Romeo leaves the party, running in front of his friends, who walk after him
yelling his name through the dark and silent streets of Verona: “Romeo, Romeo!” It is all
they say, while the young Montague decides to climb the Capulet walls to once again see
his love. Juliet is at the balcony talking to the night, and as Romeo announces himself she
walks down some steps to profess her love for him. The dialogue proceeds almost in the
integrity of the Shakespeare play, and the action finishes with a passionate kiss. After the
balcony scene, Romeo runs through the woods to meet the Friar, who is outside the
church taking care of a garden. They walk inside the church, we see a cross, and Romeo
tells the Friar about his intention to exchange vows with Juliet, which after initial
reluctance is accepted – their dialogue is a much shorter version of the original, which
omits, for instance, the initial monologue of the Friar.
Sitting on the stairs in the central plaza of fair Verona, Mercutio, Romeo and
other Montagues talk out loud, following the beginning lines of the play. The Nurse
comes to their presence and responding to the comic tone of Mercutio. She and Mercutio
challenge each other with ironic words. Mercutio steps down to play with the Nurse
walking around her, fooling around her, getting his head under her skirt. The action
between the two ends when she decides to explain her arrival: “gentleman, can any of
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you tell me where I may find the young Romeo?” Romeo stands up, and he and the Nurse
walk into a church to arrange for the exchange of vows between him and Juliet.
Juliet waits impatiently for the Nurse in the garden of her house. The Nurse
arrives, and Juliet can barely wait about the news of Romeo. The next passage of the film
takes us to Romeo, Juliet, and the Friar in the secret and close celebration of the exchange
of vows – once again lines of the play are shortened.
“Bla, bla, bla” says Mercutio, and “bla, bla, bla” he says again – literally,
according to Zeffirelli’s decision. Mercutio and the Montagues are at the central plaza of
Verona again. Tybalt arrives, Mercutio walks to a water-fountain and presents his sword
to Tybalt and they start a fight in the center of the plaza. Romeo arrives attempting to
stop the combat with tender words: “…love thee better than thou canst devise.” Mercutio
and Tybalt challenge themselves with swords and ironic words. They continue fighting
among the audience. Romeo rushes between Tybalt and Mercutio, and in this moment of
distraction Mercutio is wounded by Tybalt. Mercutio dies. Tybalt runs away through the
streets of Verona chased by an angry and revolted Romeo. The swords are put up again,
then between Tybalt and Romeo, and the fight is taken once more to the center of the
plaza. Romeo kills Tybalt. The Nurse runs to inform Juliet about the death of her cousin,
in a shorter-length scene compared to the one of the play. Benvolio says little (as he does
in the play). The Prince announces the banishment of Romeo.
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At the church, lying on the floor, crying in desperation, Romeo informs the Friar
of his last actions. The Nurse arrives to call on Romeo, as Juliet waits for him. The next
passage of the film moves to the naked bodies of Romeo and Juliet on the bed after their
love night. “Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day” (much of the original dialogue
between the star-crossed lovers is preserved): the Nurse announces the entrance of Lady
Capulet, and Romeo escapes from Verona riding a horse.
Capulet tells Juliet about her arranged wedding with Paris, in a scene where the
conversation between Juliet and the Nurse preserves Shakespeare’s lines only at its end
(before the young lover leaves to church to talk to the Friar). Juliet runs to the Friar, who
at that moment with Paris. As Paris leaves, Juliet cries her tragedy. Staring at a flower the
Friar has the idea about the remedy which will make her seem dead. And, this part of the
film, once again, cuts more than half of the original dialogue in the sequence. Juliet
returns home and tells her father she is going to marry Paris. Right after, alone in her
chamber, before sleeping, she drinks the remedy given by the Friar. The Friar sends a
messenger, Friar John (riding a donkey), to tell Romeo about his plan with Juliet. From
this scene Zeffirelli takes us to Juliet’s body being taken to the Capulet tomb. Balthasar,
from the Montague household, watches the funeral and rides his horse to encounter
Romeo. As the story goes, Romeo leaves Mantua earlier than the arrival of Friar John and
returns to Verona riding his horse in desperation, right to the Capulet tomb. We do not
see Romeo buying the fatal poison, neither the scene between Paris and Romeo outside
the tomb. At the tomb, first Romeo notes the body of Tybalt, then he sees the body of
Juliet – at this point most of Shakespeare words for Romeo’s monologue are kept. Romeo
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drinks the fatal poison and dies. The Friar arrives at the tomb and finds the dead body of
Romeo lying on the ground. Juliet wakes up: “where is my Romeo?” Suddenly, hearing
noises coming from outside, the Friar leaves the tomb: “a fear comes upon me,” he says.
Juliet sees her lover dead, and not finding any of his poison left, “let me die,” she says,
and kills herself with a dagger. At the end, the two households, Capulets and Montagues
go to Verona to carry the bodies of the star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, to the
church. Before they walk in, the Prince stresses the regretful fruits of the hate between
the two families.
Zeffirelli cuts more than half of text of the original play to compose a coherent
intersection of images and words. Although the dialogue between Romeo and Juliet is
close to that of Shakespeare’s play a few additions are made to the dialogue. Zeffirelli
sets his story in the Italian Renaissance exhibiting a careful study of this period in all his
settings and costumes, working to support the easily-engaging tragic tale of the young
lovers, a timeless essence of Shakespeare’s plays as the way of identification with the
public.
The greatest achievement of Franco Zeffirelli was to be able to compose a
different manner of telling the everlasting story. Romeo and Juliet will always be Romeo
and Juliet, but the Shakespeare play bears the literary power, the effectiveness of the
words. On the other hand, Zeffirelli was competent enough to bring to the screen the
imaginary constructions originated from what the words say. Shakespeare do not provide
the reader with a considerable number of stage directions or setting descriptions, or any
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sort of detailed orientation to interpret and bring it to life as a live experience (either in
theater or film). Regardless of the medium, adapting Shakespeare is a challenging
process. What Shakespeare writes we see, through different perspective. In adapting to a
medium of wide diffusion Zeffirelli is seeing for many people. His version of
Shakespeare has become the Shakespeare version itself to a great number of spectators
who had never read the play before. Even for those who know Shakespeare’s Romeo and
Juliet, the film might be shaping their imagination, giving form to what was before words
and mental constructions originated from their imagination.
Zeffirelli presents visual representations for a determined reality. His Verona is
really located in Italy. The costumes and settings are product of a careful art direction,
which sets the story in the Renaissance period. Yet, it must be considered that
Shakespeare never said how Capulet and Montague would dress, and there is no detailed
description of the fair Verona either. Hence, the adaptation in terms of visual composition
turns to be the most explicit expression of personal reading of the tale, Zeffirelli’s
reading. The film provides a universal comprehension of the tale. Due to its literary
complexity, the time it was written (the audience who was addressed), Shakespeare’s
work often represents an obstacle hard to be overcome. Reading Shakespeare constitutes
a challenge for general audiences, and it is here that the filmic universality is truly
determined. Reading a text requires the reader a certain knowledge about the language
the text was written, and ability to assimilate arrangement of the words that composes
this text. On the other hand, film can be more easily understood, at least superficially:
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consistent images do not need subtitles, and primary explanations to be seen. Images
communicate with broader audiences transcending idioms and literary barriers.
Zeffirelli’s characters use Shakespeare’s words in their dialogues. Despite
considerable cuts from the Bard’s text, Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet is a complete and
effective piece. Verbal gaps are fulfilled by images. If Zeffirelli had employed the
Shakespearean text in its integrity the actions of the story would be overlapped, the film
would be redundant and unsuccessful as a cinematographic experience. Zeffirelli’s
Romeo and Juliet progresses coherently with two-thirds of the text because it is the visual
structure that leads the story-telling. For instance, the spectator does not need to hear the
entire Shakespeare dialogue between Capulet and Paris in act 1, scene 2 to understand
who the characters are and what are their intentions. Instead, in this scene set in the
Capulet house, we see Paris and Capulet looking at Juliet through a window. And, the
images of them looking at her are quite stronger than the brief dialogue between them.
The dialogue here only summarizes the main idea of the scene and connects it with the
next scene. Not having the scene where Romeo kills Paris at the Capulet’s tomb does not
affects the closure of the film version. The omission does not damage the progression of
Zeffirelli’s film. It ends coherently reserving its last moments exclusively to the tragedy
of the two young lovers. At the same time, adding the musical performance at the ball of
Capulet’s costume feast Zeffirelli gives his film a special mood. The music strengths the
engagement of the spectator who is watching the film. Setting the mood, it helps the
director to emphasize this important romantic moment when Romeo and Juliet first meet.
Another distinguished choice made by Zeffirelli in his version was to show Romeo and
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Juliet naked on bad waking up from their night of love. In Shakespeare’s version (scene 5
in act III) the action takes place with Romeo and Juliet entering aloft at the window.
Zeffirelli’s camera is within the room, showing the lovers as lovers generally wake up
after a night of love. Zeffirelli gives a step forward showing what before the film could
only be imagined. He adds an important element to the progression of his reading of the
tale. With the camera Zeffirelli brings the audience a realistic Verona (the central plaza,
the Capulet’s house, the Church, the tomb). His film does for the audience what the
physical and logistic limitations of the theatrical space cannot do: see a complete
expression of an imaginary space, a complete and realistic environment, with inside and
outside locations.
B. William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, by Baz Luhrmann
A television set appears from a black screen. A Black woman is the anchor of a
news program who narrates Shakespeare’s prologue (conveniently suppressing the two
last lines). And, from “star-cross’d lovers,” in a fast zoom movement, Luhrmann takes us
for his fair Verona Beach with an aerial shot, flying over the city we pass by many
Christian images, statues of the city, helicopters.
The prologue is read once again, but now by a male voice, in voice-over to wide
shots of the city, which are followed by still frames introducing the main characters of the
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tale, a fast-speed editing that ends up with the title of the film: William Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet.
The action of the film actually begins in a Gas Station with beach-punksMontagues and Latin-Capulets, ready for a gang duel. Their guns, which have the
household names carved, are from the brand “Sword.” A sign at the gas station, as
happen in other moments of the film (with other suggestive visual indications), preannounces what is about to come in the story: “add more fuel to your fire.” The
Montagues’ and Capulets’ boys blow out the gas station, and leave the place shooting
their guns through the middle of the traffic. They drive cars whose plates also designate
their respective households. As in Shakespeare play, the social disturbance is interrupted
by the Prince, but the Prince is then a Black Police Chief. In the sequence we have the
“heads” of the two households, Capulet and Montague, listening to the Prince’s sermon.
And, proceeding Montague, Lady Montague and Benvolio are driven in a limousine.
Montague and Lady Montague ask Benvolio where Romeo could be.
Romeo is at the beach at the center of a structure assembled on the shore, in the
form of an arch. Verona beach, and its inhabitants: a whore and a man walk on the shore.
Romeo is smoking, he looks depressed. He watches a television which shows the events
involving the two households that had just passed at the gas station – disturbing the peace
of the “fair Verona.” Meanwhile, the sympatic and successful Paris is on the cover of
Time Magazine. He talks with Capulet, they go to sauna together to talk about Juliet.
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Romeo and Benvolio are playing pool. There is a heart drawn on a board on the
back. There, once again through a television, they both get to know about the Capulet’s
costume party that night. Meanwhile in the Capulet’s mansion. There is an irritating and
incessant scream calling “Juliet,” or “Julieta.” Lady Capulet looks for her daughter to talk
about Paris, who she points on the cover of the Time magazine.
Fireworks illuminate the night announcing the beginning of the Capulet’s costume
party. Juliet is an angel. Outside the walls knight-Romeo meets a Black Mercutio-DragQueen who is over enthusiastic about the event and brings the invitations for the
Montague’s boys to get in the party.
In the party, after Mercutio Drag Queen’s performance, choreographing “young
hearts, run free…,” in a highly-excited environment, we see a stunned Romeo. The
camera is slow and at a certain point it starts spinning, following the mental state of
Romeo at the moment. Romeo is definitely on drugs. He washes his face an attempt to
regain conscience, and then walks toward an aquarium. Looking at the fish Romeo finds
Juliet. The ambiance is completed by a romantic musical performance which takes place
at the ball.
Angel-Juliet dances with astronaut-Paris (who looks like a fool) at the ball.
Romeo observes them. Devil-Tybalt kisses his aunt Cleopatra-Lady Capulet, on the
mouth, while Caesar-Capulet enjoys the event surrounded by other women. At the end of
the music, Romeo and Juliet run to the house’s elevator, and going up, “to heaven,” they
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kiss. Coming back down, “to earth,” the love-at-first-sight sequence finishes with Romeo
hearing from the Nurse, that Juliet is a Capulet. Juliet, also directly through the Nurse,
discovers that Romeo is a Montague.
The beach-punks are leaving the party, but Romeo jumps out of Mercutio’s car to
climb the wall of the Capulet mansion, and look for his Juliet again. Romeo arrives at a
swimming pool area, and Juliet appears, not at the balcony, but to fall into the water after
saying: “take all myself,” as Romeo responds that “I take thee at thy word.” The “starcrossed lovers” kiss in the water, and for some seconds Romeo is submerged to escape
the house security-control disturbed by the noise of their fall. Kisses, love lines, kisses,
but the complete satisfaction can just be achieved by the exchange of their love’s faithful
vows. The romance is interrupted by Nurse again, calling out loud her “Julieta.” We see a
Virgin Mary statue behind the curtain. Juliet goes to the balcony, and saying goodbye to
her lover comes the next music of the soundtrack: “you and me, always, and forever, you
and me…”
The next day, the sun shines. Again, aerial shots of Verona Beach take the
audience to a garden on the top of a building where the Friar, not wearing a shirt, is
teaching some kids. The camera pans from an open blue sky to Romeo who had just
come into the scene. With Jesus’ image at the background, Romeo tells the Friar of his
desire to exchange vows with Juliet. The next images are the Virgin Mary, followed by a
Black-like Gospel presentation. The Friar is perturbed with the sudden decision of
Romeo. Yet, he remembers the history of hate between the two households (Montague
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and Capulet), in fast-editing sequence of newspapers covers about the violence practiced
by the households. Flying doves announce Friar’s decision to celebrate the wedding, who
aims, with the matrimonial union of the young lovers, to bring peace back to fair Verona.
Another aerial shot of Verona Beach serves as transition for the next scene.
Romeo is at the beach shore with his friends. The Nurse arrives at their territory
to talk with Romeo, and while they talk Mercutio shots his gun to the air trying to attract
Romeo’s attention. After the time and date for the wedding is confirmed, the next music
is “love me, love me, say that you love me…” The Nurse returns home where an anxious
Juliet awaits her. Virign Mary blesses the scene. A gospel song is the soundtrack for the
church scene where blue-neon crosses and candles illuminate the wedding of Romeo and
Juliet is set.
At the beach shore Mercutio, as usual, is speaking out loud and, in one more
exhibitionist act, he shoots the water with his gun. Tybalt arrives, framed within the
structure in form of arch on the shore (in a beautiful contrast composition), to confront
the just secretly-married Romeo. Mercutio cannot stand the provocation directed to his
friend and faces Tybalt. When Romeo rushes between them to stop the fight, Mercutio is
killed with a piece of glass. The music at this point foreshadows the tragedy that is about
to come. It sets the mood of a transition. The sudden change from sunny-beach- day to a
dark-scary-sky brings an apocalyptic landscape with wind, thunders, lighting. Tybalt’s
silhouette in desperation is framed within the arch-structure on the shore. Meanwhile,
waiting for her husband, Juliet’s praying is surrounded by Christian images.
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In this dark day that is turned to night, Romeo is in a mad car-chasing for Tybalt.
Romeo kills Tybalt. We see Juliet’s face. Romeo drops his gun, the announced storm
comes about, and with his arms wide open, Romeo cries in desperation. The police
arrives. Juliet still prays. Romeo runs to the church, and is consoled by the Friar, who
lends the soaked-Romeo his Hawaiian shirt. With the arrival of the Nurse, he “pushes”
Romeo “to the arms of Juliet” and for their love night - before the day comes to take the
banished Romeo to Mantua.
Covered by the bed sheets the naked lovers, now married, enjoy the last minutes
of satisfaction, but the day light takes Romeo away. The particular moment when Romeo
gets below the sheets to talk with Juliet visually reminds the effect accomplished by
Zeffirelli when Mercutio puts his face under the Nurse’s skirt in the center of Verona’s
plaza. Lady Capulet comes in announcing Juliet’s wedding with Paris. Juliet attempts
suicide with a gun, but is halted by the Friar who instructs her about a sleeping potion
that will bring a solution to the drama. Following the plan, the Friar appears telling the
Capulets about Juliet’s death: her body showed from above, lies on the bed and is taken
to the same church of blue-neon crosses and classes.
The urgent letter, sent by the Friar through a FedEx-UPS type of service,
informing Romeo about the plan to save Juliet from the wedding with Paris is not
delivered, as Romeo is not at his home-trailer in Mantua, where he was supposed to be.
He is smoking and writing, banished in the desert. A misinformed messenger, Balthasar,
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reaches Romeo first, and on his knees he cries the loss of Romeo’s love: Juliet! Romeo
leaves with Balthasar’s car.
In Verona Beach the Friar is at the phone asking about the delivery of his
message. Meanwhile Romeo is already buying a mortal poison at the place where he was
playing pool with Benvolio earlier in the film. Romeo gets to the church where the body
of Juliet lies. He is being chased by the police, shooting at him. The church is still the
same - blue-neon crosses and candles. Romeo moves his head, Juliet moves her hand - a
slight move. She opens her eyes at the exact second when he drinks the fatal poison:
“with this kiss I die.” In a shocking move Juliet points the gun to her head and shoots. An
upper view frame shows the bodies of the dead lovers “floating,” “spinning” in front of
our eyes: “up-side down,” the lovers are in heaven – flashes of past scenes (as flashes of
past lives) are fast screened, sealing the tragedy. The bodies are collected at the church by
ambulances. The Prince, the Black Police Chief, regrets the tragedy in his loud speech. A
television set coming from the black screen, as in the beginning of the film, appears again
to finish the “news-coverage” of the “star-crossed lovers.” The television shuts off and
vanishes in the black in a backward movement.
Regarding specifically dialogue, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet uses
exclusively Shakespeare’s words, but with considerable cut or different placement. With
the exception of its two last lines, which were suppressed, the Prologue of the
Shakespeare play is kept, only changing the “is now the two-hours’ traffic of our stage”
for “is now the two-hours’ traffic of our story.” The initial lines of Samson and Gregory
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do not exist in the film. The scene is dominated by Benvolio and Tybalt, and it is one of
the beach-punk Montagues who bites his thumb at Tybalt, and not Samson, the
servicemen of the Capulets, who does so, as it is in the play. The Prince monologue
condemning the riot is cut in half, as is the conversation between Montague and
Benvolio, and between Benvolio and Romeo right after.
The first talking between Capulet and Paris is shorter and in different order. From
there the film jumps right to the Capulet mansion, and for Capulet’s wife looking for
Juliet. Mercutio’s Queen Mab monologue is delivered in its entirety. At the Capulet’s
party there is an addition to the original Romeo text: “the drugs are quick,” he says in
Luhrmann’s film. As the party proceeds, Tybalt’s indignation with Romeo’s presence in
the house is shorted, while Romeo and Juliet first encounter is kept practically whole. In
Luhrmann’s version the Nurse does not go ask who Romeo is, she answers it right away.
There was not much left from Benvolio and Mercutio talking after they leave the
party. Yet, the employment of Shakespeare’s words is almost complete in the
conversation between the “star-crossed lovers” declaring their love to each other. The
same happens in the following scene in the conversation between Romeo and the Friar,
where Romeo asks the Friar to celebrate his wedding. Benvolio and Mercutio’s scene at
the shore begins the same but looses almost all of the last part of the dialogue. Almost
completely lost is also the initial part of the dialogue in the scene in which the Nurse
comes in to talk with Romeo. The exchange of vows celebration is brief, even briefer
than in the Shakespeare play. The sequence of Mercutio death, followed by Tybalt’s
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death, was also reduced, and here some lines said by Juliet in the play are brought earlier
in the editing of the film. The conversation between Juliet and the Nurse about Tybalt’s
death does not exist in the film. Banished Romeo does not speak much with the Friar, as
the Nurse very soon comes to take Romeo to his wife. The Friar’s monologue in this
scene is cut to less than one third of the original sequence. Capulet and Paris’ agreement
on the wedding date, that is the following scene in the play, in the film comes only after
the love making scene.
“Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day,” says Juliet, and this scene’s lines
remain almost in their entirety between the lovers until Romeo leaves through the
balcony. On the other hand, the dialogue of Juliet, Capulet’s wife and the Nurse that
follows is extensively cut, and so is the encounter of Juliet and the Friar at the church
where she gets the remedy to pretend her death. The dialogues between Capulet, his wife,
and Juliet in the moments prior to her “pretended-death” are not present here. Of the
finding of Juliet’s body there was not even a trace of the original dialogue. This passage
in the film is represented by a couple lines proclaimed by the Friar, from there, in words,
Luhrmann takes us directly to Mantua, to drastically reduced talking between Romeo and
Balthasar, and Romeo and the Apothecary.
The Friar briefly argues about the not delivered message at the phone, but to
“FedEx-UPS-service,” and not to Friar John as in the play. When Romeo arrives in the
church, and not in the Capulet tomb, there is no Paris there, just a very short goodbye
given to Balthasar. Romeo’s before-death monologue is cut to half, despite keeping the
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same last line: “thy drugs are quick! Thus with a kiss I die.” In Luhrmann’s film the Friar
does not appear to talk with Juliet when she wakes up. From Romeo’s death to Juliet’s
awaking, all the lines in between of the play were omitted in the film version. The next
and last words said on the play are the Prince’s “all are punished…” followed by the
television-anchor (from the beginning of the story) finishing the news-coverage with the
very same and last words of the play.
A glooming peace this morning with it brings.
The sun for sorrow will not show his head.
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.
Some shall be pardoned, and some punished;
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo. (Romeo and Juliet, act 5, scene 3)
Baz Luhrmann makes a very personal reading of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
The significance of his piece relies specially in contextual adaptation of the tale. His film
is a careful and detailed contemporary translation of the everlasting love story. New
visual and audio elements are juxtaposed, edited in extraordinary rhythmic coordination,
whose innovative character constitutes a provocative and audacious discourse. Luhrmann
keeps fidelity to Shakespeare’s words but cutting considerable their use when images can
“do the work.” Often, in the scenes between Romeo and Juliet the dialogues are kept in
their integrity (following the same choice made by Franco Zeffirelli). However,
Shakespeare’s words in Luhrmann’s film cannot be exactly assumed to be Shakespeare’s
words. Besides contextual implications that naturally change their meanings in
contemporary understandings, in William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet “speaking
Shakespeare” becomes a language for Verona Beach end of century, of the Generation-X.
Luhrmann composed a film, and not the play, set (with its locations, wardrobe – all
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elements) under a contemporary environment to access the youthful audience it talks to.
And, in this sense, the film is successful.
Luhrmann’s dialogue and basic structural choices reveal essential influences from
Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. Luhrmann shows Romeo buying the fatal poison
and do not show the Friar at the tomb, but besides these two scenes Luhrmann follows
Zeffirelli’s choices for dialogues and scenes. Although the story, once again, is still the
same, and the structure is quite similar to the earlier filmic adaptation of Zeffirelli,
Luhrmann composed a unique Romeo and Juliet.
The changes made by Luhrmann to make this a significant version of the story are
not restricted to a contemporary view of wardrobe and settings. The accomplishment of
Luhrmann lies in the interaction of these elements with the secular language and structure
given by Shakespeare. William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet unfamiliarizes the audince
with the familiar. In the Verona Beach of the end of the millennium the young spectator
can easily identify himself/herself in the clothes of the young characters, in their habits
and addictions, their way of looking, and their violent response to the corrupted society
they live. The music works in the same way for spectators and characters. Yet the story
itself comes from a distant reality to this audience, from the hardly understood
complexity of William Shakespeare’s words. The often misunderstood language of
Shakespeare written in the Elizabethan period becomes a comprehensive story to young
generations. The Bard’s writings are still there, but not the Elizabethan poetry in which
they were originally spoken. Shakespeare’s words spoken by Luhrmann’s characters
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become the dialect of the young generation. The Shakespearean poetry becomes the rap
of this end of century – a familiar way to communicate an unfamiliar text. When
Mercutio and Benvolio speak at the beach (act 3, scene 1), for example. We have the
impression that we are hearing two friends talking about they daily matters. That is what
we see, that is how the words sound. However, at the sunny shore of Verona Beach, with
open shirts, the two young friends are actually discussing in Shakespearean words about
the hate of the two households.
Benvolio
I pray thee, good Mercutio, let’s retire.
The day is hot, the Capels are abroad,
And, if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl,
For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.
(Romeo and Juliet, act 3, scene 1)
The film was universal to the audience it was addressing, the Generation-X, in all
possible ways: clothes, places, music, actions and expectations. But mainly in how these
elements were assembled, put together, to constitute the complete and most contemporary
version of the star-crossed lovers’ tale. The young characters meet at the beach, they wear
colored shirts, they smoke, they play pool, and they look aggressive and depressed.
The final configuration of this universe composed by Luhrmann could only be
achieved by a precise editing. The rhythm of William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet
corresponds to the rhythm of the Generation-X who grew up in an MTV style. Therefore,
reading Shakespeare in a familiar pace makes it an easily accepted experience. Moreover,
to set this cadenced version and become a definitive and indubitable representation for its
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audience, we must say that this film could not exist without its soundtrack. The music is
an essential element of the film, present in most of the piece, cued in determinant
moments. More than setting mood the music tells the story as well. This two hours long
presentation could not exist without music, its power would have been lost. The tone of
the music changes according to the dramatic implications of the scenes it needs to
present. For instance, it is aggressive in the gas station sequence, enthusiastic announcing
the beginning of the party, melancholic when Romeo and Juliet first meet, romantic in the
balcony scene and gospel during the wedding of the two lovers. To produce a video-clip
we need images and music, both working together to achieve an ultimate result. Perhaps
this could be a definition for William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet: youth 1996’s
Shakespeare in motion picture and music, loud and angry rock n’ roll.
“My own view is that truly great story telling defies time, geography and the so
called rules of right and wrong; the proof of its worth is that it lives on.” (Baz Luhrman in
Cineaste, 1998, v.24, p.55)
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Conclusion
As I presented in this work the issue of adaptation is much more than a simple
search to re-tell a story. The translation of languages involves a number of particularities
that might decide whether this process is effective or not. Adapting requires ability, welldeveloped skills to read and respond to previous expressions. Yet, in order to exist as a
complete and separate expression, in the sense that it exists by itself as an original
expression, the task of the adapter must transcend a regular reader. The exercise of this
process should bear the aim of bringing something else into the work, being not a mere
tribute to the material it proceeds, but as a contribution per se. Adapting implies a wise
response to what is already known in another form. To not be labeled as reproduction an
adaptation needs to present a distinguished interpretation to the source it was raised from.
The possibility to experience a story in a different medium should represent to the adapter
and to the audience an unique opportunity to enrich the meanings of the “original” story.
The adaptation should derive from an exhaustive process of rethinking. It must be
innovative to tell the story, to tell it differently. The adapted material can be considered
merely functional if it just re-tells the story in simpler manners or reemphasizing already
established interpretations. However, in doing so, it fails to achieve what every artistic
manifestation should pursue: to make a fresh statement.
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Adaptation is a common and resourceful process in cinema. The results and any
possible evaluation of such works, however, should not be essentially nor excessively
centered on the source choice, and what it represents as an artistic expression. The
adaptation should be appreciated as a progressive but also independent artistic
composition. An analysis on an adapted piece should embrace the virtues of this work as
an accomplishment resulting of specific rules and principles. The appropriated material is
reshaped to suit and to take place under a particular time and spatial relation. And, the
development of this material should be the one of a story elaborated to a different
medium, according to different perspectives. The approach to adaptations should mainly
concern with the effectiveness of the production to communicate the story in the alternate
medium, presenting a new finality to its existence. However, this might be specially
difficult regarding Shakespeare. The brilliance and importance of the Bard’s stories are
usually obstacles to the legitimization of any adaptation based on his work. Regardless of
its finality, an adaptation progressing from Shakespeare faces the challenge to bring some
variation to a definitive story.
Observing some of the specificity of theater and film, I mentioned in this research
many productions which attempted to present Shakespeare in a different medium. The
problem, however, was that most of these films were exclusively bringing the Bard
stories to the screens and not truly adapting these stories to the screens. Changing
medium means changing language. This is true for any adaptation, and fundamental in
adapting Shakespeare. Created for the Elizabethan stages, the contextual implications of
the stories and the complexity of the words make Shakespeare a challenge to any
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adaptation (not only in film but in theater as well). In choosing Romeo and Juliet the case
of study of this work I wanted to discuss the idea that the adaptation is a persistent search
to find different ways to express an uncontrollable creative power. I was looking for films
which could exemplify ways to explore the particularities and the potentials of the
medium; films which could tell the more than four hundred years story in a different
form, in a context that the original story would never be able to communicate, because it
was written for a different audience and with a different finality. Romeo and Juliet was
meant to be popular in 1596. Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet and Baz Luhrmann’s
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet also meant to be popular, but for the spectator of
1968 and 1996, respectively, and not on the Elizabethan stage, but on the screens. These
two films still tell the same everlasting tale of the star-crossed lovers. Nevertheless, the
story, in both films, was truly adapted. In Zeffirelli’s and Luhrmann’s films Romeo and
Juliet was translated to the cinematographic language. They responded to a different
public. Both director provided the spectator with personal and contextual interpretations
of the tale. The films differ from the Shakespeare’s play in terms that allow us to point
them as successful pieces. The secular tale remains essentially the same, but the transition
of medium and perspective (regarding contextual implications) retell the story very
successfully.
To comment on Shakespeare’s play is something that my restricted knowledge
and skills would not allow me to do. To discuss on the two most recent and popular film
adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, Zeffirelli’s and Luhrmann’s, was, however, easier
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because they address the contemporary audience to which I belong to, specially
Luhrmann’s film.
I do not want to relegate or diminish Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. I believe that it
is because of this early production that Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo +
Juliet came to exist. However, it is with Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet that I can more
directly and naturally identify myself. And this is because I am a member of the
Generation-X that most of the critics point out when they talk about this film. I am the
generation that went to the movie theaters to watch Leonardo Di Caprio and Claire
Danes, looking for entertainment and perhaps to start enjoying Shakespeare – and, with
my limited knowledge about him at that time, I did, and it is thanks to this popproduction that now I know a little bit more about him. The film spoke with me, and
stimulated my curiosity to look for more. Shakespeares’ plays are extraordinary source
for cinematographic productions. Yet, merely reproducing the staged plays in front of the
cameras cannot characterize a film as a true adaptation, once it is not exploring the
potentialities of the medium.
I believe that, in adapting Shakespeare there is still an unsolved and disturbing
issue: Shakespeare dialogue. The dialogue is the story itself, what Shakespeare wrote.
But how can those words be translated into the context of a contemporary dialogue - in
any contemporary language of any location of the globe nowadays? As we see in William
Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet the lines seem displaced when spoken by the actors, on the
other hand, as paradoxical as it may sound, because they run so different from the
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images, they sound incredible interesting to me, contributing to the original aspects
Luhrmann presented in his work. Shakespeare words in Luhrmann’s world acquire a new
form of existence, and, naturally, new meanings. A language more than four-hundred
years old cannot speak with today audience as it did in its time. Is it the MTV
Shakespeare version? It probably is. But it was the right choice to communicate to whom
the film wanted to communicate, the Generation-X. Does Shakespeare work in film? It
sure does. It depends on who tells his story, but essentially in how it is going to be told
and for what finality.
Despite the many theater and film adaptations made from Shakespeare’s film, it
would be impossible to give an explanation on how this process can be better made. The
nature of the two media addresses fundamental aspects that could be observed along this
study. Zeffirelli and Luhrmann were able to add a different dimension to Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet accomplishing different results than the ones achieved by the theater
adaptations. This new dimension regards essentially the tension accomplished by the
dynamic relation between time and space to bring visual and verbal elements juxtaposed
as a filmic unit. Shakespeare plays are temporal and spatial experiences as well.
However, in film the action is composed by angles, shots, movement, stillness, sounds,
textures and colors. And, these elements evidence the intrinsic differences of the media.
For instance, Luhrmann achieves a tension in the scene of the death of Romeo and Juliet
only possible by the use of filmic devices. His edited sequence engages the audience with
great intensity, giving the impression that Juliet will wake up before Romeo drinks the
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fatal poison. The resolution of this scene shows Juliet waking up at the same time that
Romeo is dying.
Moreover, as we can observe in Zeffirelli’s and Luhrmann’s films, the spectator
has the chance to experience inside and outside worlds. Juxtaposing wide angles and
close-ups, interior and exterior locations in frames, the films offer the audience to see a
world closer to “reality.” The filmic language gives visual definitions to the story, to the
characters’ actions, and it also offers intimate connections with those character. In
William Shakespeare Romeo + Juliet we are presented to Verona Beach. We “fly” over
the city, “go” to the beach, “see” the depression and disillusion of Romeo because of
Rosaline, and “enter” the Capulet house, to “look” in Romeo’s and Juliet’s eyes when
they fall in love seeing each other through an aquarium.
Zeffirelli and Luhrmann are authors of new readings for Shakespeare’s Romeo
and Juliet. Both directors produced quite popular films supported by casting choices:
young and beautiful actors for young and beautiful audiences. Zeffirelli’s and
Luhrmann’s star-crossed lovers were as young as the audiences they were addressing.
The films were as commercial as Shakespeare’s play, attempting to reach wide audiences.
They change traditions as the play does. Shakespeare turned a comedy into a tragedy.
Zeffirelli created a screen version of the tale, defining the visual settings and selecting the
lines from Shakespeare’s story to keep the coherence of his own interpretation.
Luhrmann used most of Zeffirelli’s dialogue choices, and composed a contemporary
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expression for the story through intense camera movements and an aggressive rock n’ roll
soundtrack.
85
Works Cited
1. Andrews, John F. Romeo and Juliet: Critical Essays. New York: Garland
Publishing, Inc., 1993.
2. Assis Brasil. Cinema e Literatura: Choque de Linguagem. Rio de Janeiro:
Tempo Brasileiro, 1967.
3. Ball, Robert Hamilton. Shakespeare on Silent Film. London: George Allen and
Unwinn Ltda., 1968.
4. Bandeira, Roberto. A Literatura no Cinema. Rio de Janeiro: Pongetti, 1962.
5. Boose, Lynda E., and Burt, Richard, ed. Shakespeare, The Movie. New York:
Routledge, 1997.
6. Brady, Ben. Principles of Adaptation for Film and Television. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1994.
7. Brode, Douglas. Shakespeare in the Movies. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000.
8. Buchman, Lorne M. Still in Movement. New York: Oxford University Press,
1991.
9. Burnett, Mark Thornton and Wray, Ramona, ed. Shakespeare, Film, Fin de
Siècle. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.
10. Caso, Adolph, (introduction). Romeo and Juliet. Boston: Dante University of
America Press, 1992.
11. Collick, John. Shakespeare, cinema and society. Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1989.
12. Coursen, H. R. Shakespeare in Production: Whose History? Athens: Ohio
University Press, 1996.
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13. Crowl, Samuel. Shakespeare Observed: Studies in Performance on Stage and
Screen. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992.
14. Daneyger, Ken e Rash, Jeff. Alternative Scriptwriting: Writing Beyond
the Rules. Boston: Focal Press, 1995.
15. Davies, Anthony. Filming Shakespeare’s Plays. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988.
16. Davies, Anthony and Wells, Stanley, ed. Shakespeare and the Moving Image.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
17. Desmet, Christy and Sawyer, Robert, ed. Shakespeare and Appropriation. New
York: Routledge, 1999.
18. Donaldson, Peter S. Shakespeare Films/Shakespeare Directors. Boston: Unwin
Hyman, 1990.
19. Eckert, Charles W., ed. Shakespearean Films. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1972.
20. Eisenstein, Sergei. A Forma do Filme. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1990.
21. Eisenstein, Sergei. O Sentido do Filme. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1990.
22. Field, Syd. Os Exercícios do Roteirista. Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 1996.
23. Foss, Bob. Filmaking: Narrative, Structural, Techniques. Los Angeles:
Selman - James Press, 1992.
24. Giannetti, Louis. Understanding Movies. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall, 1996.
25. Gifford, Denis. Books and Plays in Films: 1896-1915. New York: McFarland &
Co., 1991.
26. Halio, Jay L. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: Texts, Contexts, and
Interpretation. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995.
27. Halio, Jay L. Romeo and Juliet: A Guide to the Play. Westport, Connecticut:
Greenwood Press, 1998.
28. Holland, Peter. Romeo and Juliet. New York: Penguin, 2000.
29. Holderness, Graham. Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet. New York: Penguin,
1990.
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30. Honan, Park. Shakespeare a Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
31. Levenson, Jill L. Shakespeare in Performance: Romeo and Juliet. New York:
Manchester University Press, 1987.
32. Manvell, Roger. Shakespeare and the Film. New York: Praeger Publishers,
1971.
33. Naremore, James, ed. Film Adaptation. New Jersey: Rutgers Univesity Press,
2000.
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York: G. K. Hall and Co., 1997.
35. Rey, Marcos. O Roteirista Profissional. São Paulo: Ática, 1989.
36. Roberts, Sasha. William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet. United Kingdom:
Northcote House Publishers Ltd., 1998.
37. Rothwell, Kenneth S. A History of Shakespeare on Screen. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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39. Shaughnessy, Robert, ed. Shakespeare on Film. New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1998.
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University Press, 1994.
41. Toles, George E, ed. Film and Literature. Winnipeg: Mosaic, 1983.
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and Juliet. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991.
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Articles
1. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
2. Crowdus, Gary. “Sharing an Enthusiasm for Shakespeare: An Interview with
Kenneth Branagh.” Cineaste, 1998a, v.24, p.34-41.
3. Crowdus, Gary. “Shakespeare Is Up to Date: An Interview with Sir Ian
McKellen.” Cineaste, 1998b, v.24, p.45-46.
4. Jackson, Russel. “Working with Shakespeare: Confessions of an Adviser.”
Cineaste, 1998, v.24, p.42-44.
5. Pendleton, Thomas A. “Shakespeare…with Additional Dialog.” Cineaste, 1998,
v.24, p.62-66.
6. Rothwel, Kenneth S. “Orson Welles: Shakespeare for the Art House.” Cineaste,
1998, v.24, p.28-33.
7. “Shakespeare in the Cinema: A Film Director’s Symposium.” Cineaste, 1998,
v.24, p.47-55.
Films
1.
Macbeth, Royal Shakespeare Company, Princenton, New Jersey: 1988, 150 min.
2.
Romeo and Juliet, BBC, UK: Ambrose Video Pub., 1987, 167 min.
3.
Romeo and Juliet, Franco Zeffirelli, Italy/U.K.: BHE/Dino de Laurentis, 1968,
152 min.
4.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Baz Luhrmann, U.S.A.: 20thCentury Fox, 1996, 120 min.