Romeo and Juliet on screen
Encyclopedia
- See also: Shakespeare on screenShakespeare on screenMore than 420 feature-length film and TV versions of William Shakespeares plays have been produced, making Shakespeare the most filmed author ever in any language...
, Romeo and Juliet (films)Romeo and Juliet (films)Cinematic adaptations of the William Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet include:* Romeo and Juliet , French title: Roméo et Juliette* Romeo and Juliet , * Romeo and Juliet ,...
.
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
may be one of the most-screened plays of all time. The most notable theatrical releases were George Cukor
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
's multi-Oscar-nominated 1936 production
Romeo and Juliet (1936 film)
Romeo and Juliet is a 1936 American film adapted from the play by Shakespeare, directed by George Cukor from a screenplay by Talbot Jennings...
, Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli KBE is an Italian director and producer of films and television. He is also a director and designer of operas and a former senator for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party....
's 1968 version
Romeo and Juliet (1968 film)
Romeo and Juliet is a 1968 British-Italian cinematic adaptation of the William Shakespeare play of the same name.The film was directed and co-written by Franco Zeffirelli, and stars Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. It won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design; it was also...
, and Baz Luhrmann
Baz Luhrmann
Mark Anthony "Baz" Luhrmann is an Australian film director, screenwriter, and producer best known for The Red Curtain Trilogy, which includes his films Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!...
's 1996 MTV-inspired Romeo + Juliet
William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet
William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet is a 1996 film adaptation of William Shakespeare's romantic tragedy of the same name. It was directed by Australian Baz Luhrmann and stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in the leading roles....
. The latter two were both, in their time, the highest-grossing Shakespeare film ever. Cukor featured Norma Shearer
Norma Shearer
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...
and Leslie Howard
Leslie Howard (actor)
Leslie Howard was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. Among his best-known roles was Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind and roles in Berkeley Square , Of Human Bondage , The Scarlet Pimpernel , The Petrified Forest , Pygmalion , Intermezzo , Pimpernel Smith...
, with a combined age over 75, as the teenage lovers. Zeffirelli populated his film with beautiful young people, and Baz Luhrmann produced a heavily-cut fast-paced version aimed at teenage audiences.
Several reworkings of the story have also been filmed, most notably West Side Story
West Side Story
West Side Story is an American musical with a script by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and choreographed by Jerome Robbins...
, Prokofiev's ballet
Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev)
Romeo and Juliet is a ballet by Sergei Prokofiev based on William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. It is one of the most enduringly popular ballets...
and Romanoff and Juliet
Romanoff and Juliet (film)
Romanoff and Juliet is a 1961 feature film adaptation of the play of the same name released by Universal Pictures. Peter Ustinov wrote the screenplay, directed, and starred in the film...
. Several theatrical films, such as Shakespeare in Love
Shakespeare in Love
Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 British-American comedy film directed by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard....
and Romeo Must Die
Romeo Must Die
Romeo Must Die is a 2000 martial arts film directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak. Starring Jet Li, Aaliyah, Anthony Anderson, Delroy Lindo, Isaiah Washington, Russell Wong, and features action and fight choreography by Corey Yuen...
, consciously use elements of Shakespeare's plot.
George Cukor (1936)
Irving Thalberg
Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff and make very profitable films.-Life and...
pushed MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
for five years to make a Romeo and Juliet, in the face of the studio's opposition: which stemmed from Louis B. Mayer
Louis B. Mayer
Louis Burt Mayer born Lazar Meir was an American film producer. He is generally cited as the creator of the "star system" within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in its golden years. Known always as Louis B...
's belief that the masses considered the Bard over their heads, and from the austerity forced on the studios by the depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. It was only when Jack Warner
Jack Warner
Jack Leonard "J. L." Warner , born Jacob Warner in London, Ontario, was a Canadian American film executive who was the president and driving force behind the Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California...
announced his intention to film Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...
's A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935 film)
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a 1935 film directed by Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle, produced by Henry Blanke and Hal Wallis, and adapted by Charles Kenyon and Mary C. McCall Jr...
that Mayer, not to be outdone, gave Thalberg the go-ahead. Thalberg's stated intention was "to make the production what Shakespeare would have wanted had he possessed the facilities of cinema." He went to great lengths to establish authenticity and the film's intellectual credentials: researchers were sent to Verona
Verona
Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...
to take photographs for the designers; the paintings of Botticelli
Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...
, Bellini
Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. His father was Jacopo Bellini, his brother was Gentile Bellini, and his brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna. He is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it...
, Carpaccio
Vittore Carpaccio
Vittore Carpaccio was an Italian painter of the Venetian school, who studied under Gentile Bellini. He is best known for a cycle of nine paintings, The Legend of Saint Ursula. His style was somewhat conservative, showing little influence from the Humanist trends that transformed Italian...
and Gozzoli
Benozzo Gozzoli
Benozzo Gozzoli was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. He is best known for a series of murals in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi depicting festive, vibrant processions with wonderful attention to detail and a pronounced International Gothic influence.-Apprenticeship:He was born Benozzo di...
were studied to provide visual inspiration; and two academic advisers (John Tucker Murray of Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and William Strunk, Jr. of Cornell
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
) were flown to the set, with instructions to criticise the production freely. The film includes two songs drawn from other plays by Shakespeare: "Come Away Death" from Twelfth Night and "Honour, Riches, Marriage, Blessing" from The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
. Thalberg had only one choice for director: George Cukor
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
, who was known as "the women's director". Thalberg's vision was that the performance of Norma Shearer, his wife, would dominate the picture.
Scholar Stephen Orgel describes Cukor's film as "largely miscast ... with a preposterously mature pair of lovers in Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer, and an elderly John Barrymore
John Barrymore
John Sidney Blyth , better known as John Barrymore, was an acclaimed American actor. He first gained fame as a handsome stage actor in light comedy, then high drama and culminating in groundbreaking portrayals in Shakespearean plays Hamlet and Richard III...
as a stagey Mercutio decades out of date." Barrymore was in his late fifties, and played Mercutio as a flirtatious tease. Romeo wears gloves in the balcony scene, and Juliet has a pet fawn. Tybalt is usually portrayed as a hot-headed troublemaker, but Basil Rathbone
Basil Rathbone
Sir Basil Rathbone, KBE, MC, Kt was an English actor. He rose to prominence in England as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in over 70 films, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, occasionally, horror films...
played him as stuffy and pompous.
Thalberg cast screen actors, rather than stage actors, but shipped-in East Coast drama coaches (such as the acclaimed Frances Robinson Duff to coach Norma Shearer - who had never acted on stage) with the unfortunate consequence that actors previously adored for their naturalism gave stilted performances. The shoot extended to six months, and the budget reached $2 million: at that time, MGM's most expensive movie.
Like most Shakespearean filmmakers, Cukor and his screenwriter Talbot Jennings
Talbot Jennings
Talbot Jennings was an American screenwriter.He was born in 1894 in Shoshone, Idaho, his father was an Episcopal archdeacon for Idaho and Wyoming. He attended Nampa High School before World War I in which he served. After to war he went to University of Idaho and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1924...
cut much of the original script: playing around 45% of it. Many of these cuts are common ones in the theatre, such as the second chorus and the comic scene of Peter with the musicians. Others are filmic: designed to replace words with action, or rearranging scenes in order to introduce groups of characters in longer narrative sequences. However, Jennings retains more of Shakespeare's poetry for the young lovers than any of his big-sceen successors. Several scenes are interpolated, including three sequences featuring Friar John in Mantua. In contrast, the role of Friar Laurence (an important character in the play) is much reduced. A number of scenes are expanded as opportunities for visual spectacle, including the opening brawl (set against the backdrop of a religious procession), the wedding and Juliet's funeral. The party scene, choreographed by Agnes de Mille
Agnes de Mille
Agnes George de Mille was an American dancer and choreographer.-Early years:Agnes de Mille was born in New York City into a well-connected family of theater professionals. Her father William C. deMille and her uncle Cecil B. DeMille were both Hollywood directors...
, includes Rosaline
Rosaline
Rosaline is an unseen character and niece of Capulet in William Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet . Although silent, her role is important. Romeo is at first deeply in love with Rosaline and expresses her cruelty for not loving him back...
(an unseen character
Unseen character
In fiction, an unseen character is a character that is never directly observed by the audience but is only described by other characters. They are a common device in drama and have been called "triumphs of theatrical invention". They are continuing characters — characters who are currently in...
in Shakespeare's script) who rebuffs Romeo. The role of Peter is enlarged, and played by Andy Devine
Andy Devine
Andrew Vabre "Andy" Devine was an American character actor and comic cowboy sidekick known for his distinctive raspy voice.-Early life:...
as a faint-hearted bully. He speaks lines which Shakespeare gave to other Capulet servants, making him the instigator of the opening brawl.
Clusters of images are used to define the central characters: Romeo is first sighted leaning against a ruined building in an arcadian scene, complete with a pipe-playing shepherd and his sheepdog; the livelier Juliet is associated with Capulet's formal garden, with its decorative fish pond.
Neither critics nor the public responded enthusiastically. Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
wrote that he was "less than ever convinced that there is an aesthetic justification for filming Shakespeare at all... the effect of even the best scenes is to distract." Cinemagoers considered the film too "arty", staying away as they had from Warner's A Midsummer Night Dream a year before: leading to Hollywood abandoning the Bard for over a decade. The film nevertheless received four oscar nominations. Subsequent film versions would make use of less experienced, but more photogenic, actors in the central roles. Cukor, interviewed in 1970, said of his film: "It's one picture that if I had to do over again, I'd know how. I'd get the garlic and the Mediterranean into it."
Franco Zeffirelli (1968)
Stephen Orgel describes Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli KBE is an Italian director and producer of films and television. He is also a director and designer of operas and a former senator for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party....
's 1968 Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet (1968 film)
Romeo and Juliet is a 1968 British-Italian cinematic adaptation of the William Shakespeare play of the same name.The film was directed and co-written by Franco Zeffirelli, and stars Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. It won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design; it was also...
as being "full of beautiful young people, and the camera, and the lush technicolour, make the most of their sexual energy and good looks." Sarah Munson Deats - referring to recent opposition to the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
- says that the film was "particularly intended to attract the counter-culture youth, a generation of young people, like Romeo and Juliet, estranged from their parents, torn by the conflict between their youthful cult of passion and the military tradition of their elders." Filming at the time of the "British Invasion
British Invasion
The British Invasion is a term used to describe the large number of rock and roll, beat, rock, and pop performers from the United Kingdom who became popular in the United States during the time period from 1964 through 1966.- Background :...
", Zeffirelli was able to use an English cast to appeal to American audiences. Zeffirelli said of his film:
In truth, Zeffirelli's young leads were already experienced actors: Leonard Whiting
Leonard Whiting
Leonard Whiting is a British actor who starred as Romeo in the 1968 Zeffirelli film version of Romeo and Juliet opposite Olivia Hussey's Juliet, a role which earned him the Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actor....
(then seventeen) had been the youngest member of the National Theatre
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
, and had played The Artful Dodger in Oliver!
Oliver!
Oliver! is a British musical, with script, music and lyrics by Lionel Bart. The musical is based upon the novel Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens....
on stage. Olivia Hussey
Olivia Hussey
Olivia Hussey is an Argentinian actress who became famous for her role as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's Academy Award-winning 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet. For this role she won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year - Actress as well as the David di Donatello for best actress...
(aged fifteen) had studied for four years at the Italia Conti Drama School
Italia Conti Academy
The Italia Conti Academy is a theatre arts training school based in London. It was founded in 1911 by actress Italia Conti...
, and had starred opposite Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave
Vanessa Redgrave, CBE is an English actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a political activist.She rose to prominence in 1961 playing Rosalind in As You Like It with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has since made more than 35 appearances on London's West End and Broadway, winning...
in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in the West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
.
Zeffirelli filmed his Romeo and Juliet shortly after completing work on his 1967 film The Taming of the Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew (1967 film)
The Taming of the Shrew is a 1967 film based on the play of the same name by William Shakespeare about a courtship between two strong-willed people...
, and had learned from his experience on that project that it was better not to include speeches made redundant by his vivid images. He played around 35% of Shakespeare's script, enhancing the focus on the two central characters and making them more sympathetic, while simplifying their roles to make them less tricky for his young leads to play. He tellingly juxtaposes the betrothal of Juliet and Paris with the Capulets' crumbling marriage. Yet the film is often noted for its zest for life and for love: the former epitomised by John McEnery's Mercutio, the latter by Leonard Whiting
Leonard Whiting
Leonard Whiting is a British actor who starred as Romeo in the 1968 Zeffirelli film version of Romeo and Juliet opposite Olivia Hussey's Juliet, a role which earned him the Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actor....
's Romeo. In contrast to Renato Castellani's 1954 version, Zeffirelli highlighted Romeo's positive relationships with the Friar, Balthazar and Mercutio. The way in which Mercutio physically collapses onto Romeo after the Queen Mab speech, and again when mortally wounded, has been credited with introducing homosexual overtones into the public perception of their relationship.
Zefirelli's handling of the duel scene has been particularly praised, and his device later adopted by Baz Luhrmann. Taking his cue from Benvolio's speech ending "For now these hot days is the mad blood stirring" Zefirelli depicts the dry, oppressive heat of the little town where (in Anthony West's words) "men seek to kill each other to relieve their exasperation at having nothing better to do". The duel is presented as bravado getting out-of-control: the youths baiting one another, half-teasingly. Critic Robert Hatch described Tybalt and Mercutio as like "a couple of neighborhood warlords, vaunting their courage with grandstand high jinks, trying for a victory by humiliation, and giving no strong impression of a taste to kill." The scene increases sympathy for Michael York
Michael York (actor)
Michael York, OBE is an English actor.-Early life:York was born in Fulmer, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, the son of Florence Edith May , a musician; and Joseph Gwynne Johnson, a Llandovery born Welsh ex-Royal Artillery British Army officer and executive with Marks and Spencer department stores...
's Tybalt (often played as a bloodthirsty bully on the stage) by making him shocked and guilty at the lethal wound he has inflicted.
Like most screen directors of the play, Zeffirelli cut the duel with Paris, which helps to keep Romeo sympathetic to the audience. More controversially, he cut all references to Romeo's first love Rosaline
Rosaline
Rosaline is an unseen character and niece of Capulet in William Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet . Although silent, her role is important. Romeo is at first deeply in love with Rosaline and expresses her cruelty for not loving him back...
, thereby preventing any comparison with his more mature love for Juliet.
A particular difficulty for any screen-writer arises towards the end of the fourth act, where Shakespeare's play requires considerable compression to be effective on the big screen, without giving the impression of "cutting to the chase". In Zeffirelli's version, Juliet's return home from the Friar's cell, her submission to her father and the preparation for the wedding are drastically abbreviated, and the tomb scene is also cut short: Paris does not appear at all, and Benvolio (in the Balthazar role) is sent away but is not threatened.
The film courted controversy by including a nude wedding-night scene while Olivia Hussey was only fifteen. Nino Rota
Nino Rota
Nino Rota was an Italian composer and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti...
's Love Theme from the film, with the original lyrics (which had been drawn from several Shakespeare plays) replaced to become the song "A Time For Us", became a modest international chart hit.
Baz Luhrmann (1996)
Romeo + Juliet (soundtrack)
William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet: Music from the Motion Picture is the soundtrack to the 1996 film of the same name. The soundtrack contained two separate releases: the first containing popular music from the film and the second containing the score to the film composed by Nellee Hooper, Craig...
successfully targeted the "MTV Generation
MTV Generation
The MTV Generation is a term sometimes used to refer to youth of the late 20th century. The term can mean different things to different people, and is sometimes used synonymously with the terms Generation X or Generation Y.- History :...
": a young audience of similar age to the story's characters. Far darker than Zeffirelli's version, the film is set in the "crass, violent and superficial society" of Verona Beach and Sycamore Grove. The visual conventions of the film were (in Stephen Orgel's words) "largely those of porn films". Luhrmann studied Zeffirelli's heavily-cut script, and retained Shakespeare's language, however he brought the setting right up-to-date. The Montagues and Capulets are mobsters in a modern Miami
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
-like city (although actually filmed in Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
and Veracruz
Veracruz, Veracruz
Veracruz, officially known as Heroica Veracruz, is a major port city and municipality on the Gulf of Mexico in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The city is located in the central part of the state. It is located along Federal Highway 140 from the state capital Xalapa, and is the state's most...
). Luhrmann said of his film:
Luhrmann was impressed with the verse-speaking of his Romeo, Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo DiCaprio
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is an American actor and film producer. He has received many awards, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Aviator , and has been nominated by the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild and the British Academy of Film and Television...
, saying "the words just came out of his mouth as if it was the most natural language possible". Others were less kind: Daniel Rosenthal comments that "DiCaprio's throwaway, sometimes inaudible delivery is, for those not inclined to swoon uncritically at his beauty, the movie's weakest link." Juliet, the sixteen year-old Claire Danes
Claire Danes
Claire Catherine Danes is an American actress of television, stage and film. She has appeared in roles as diverse as Angela Chase in My So-Called Life, as Juliet in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, as Kate Brewster in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, as Yvaine in Stardust and as Temple Grandin in...
, was praised for portraying a poise and wisdom beyond her years, and as the first screen Juliet whose speech sounded spontaneous. Miriam Margolyes
Miriam Margolyes
Miriam Margolyes, OBE is an English actress and voice artist. Her earliest roles were in theatre and after several supporting roles in film and television she won a BAFTA Award for her role in The Age of Innocence .-Early life:...
played the nurse for laughs as a plump Hispanic, forever crying "Hooliet! Hooliet!" Pete Postlethwaite
Pete Postlethwaite
Peter William "Pete" Postlethwaite, OBE, was an English stage, film and television actor.After minor television appearances including in The Professionals, Postlethwaite's first success came with the film Distant Voices, Still Lives in 1988. He played a mysterious lawyer, Mr...
, with his Celtic Cross tattoo, captures the "charming ambiguity" of the Friar. Paul Sorvino
Paul Sorvino
Paul Anthony Sorvino is an American actor. He often portrays authority figures on both sides of the law, and is possibly best known for his roles as Paulie Cicero, a portrayal of Paul Vario in the film Goodfellas and Sgt. Phil Cerreta on the police procedural and legal drama television series Law...
- a veteran of numerous Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
-movies - plays a typical gangland patriarch.
A framing device portrays the events of the play as newscasts and newspaper headlines. The film's action sequences were reminiscent of the films of Sam Peckinpah
Sam Peckinpah
David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was an American filmmaker and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch...
and John Woo
John Woo
John Woo Yu-Sen SBS is a Hong Kong-based film director and producer. Recognized for his stylised films of highly choreographed action sequences, Mexican standoffs, and use of slow-motion, Woo has directed several notable Hong Kong action films, among them, A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, Hard...
, and its characters wear designer clothes and (in Douglas Brode's words) "a lingerie collection worthy of Madonna". As Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Peter Travers is an American film critic, who has written for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com.-Career:...
commented in Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, the intention was to "make Romeo and Juliet accessible to the elusive Gen-X audience without leaving the play bowdlerised and broken". Some aspects of the modernisation have been praised as effective (a newscaster speaking the prologue, for example, or the replacement of Friar John with a courier message which gets misdelivered); others have been criticised as ridiculous: including a police chief banishing Romeo for a street killing rather than ordering his arrest. Luhrmann highlighted the religious aspects of the play, surrounding his two central characters with religious icons, and staging his finale in a cathedral. That final scene was regarded by some critics as Luhrmann's masterstroke: adapting a device first used in restoration adaptations of the play, Juliet begins to wake before Romeo takes the poison, but he does not notice her movements until he has done so, then he dies aware that she has survived. The scene uses cuts and extreme close-ups to generate a tension impossible to achieve in the theatre. The mood is undermined a moment later as Juliet blows her brains out with a pistol. The role of the watch is cut completely, permitting Friar Laurence to be with Juliet and to be taken by surprise by her sudden suicide.
The film's prominent use of tracks from popular bands including Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
and The Cardigans
The Cardigans
The Cardigans are a Swedish rock band formed in the town of Jönköping in October 1992.Their debut album Emmerdale gave them a solid base in their home country and enjoyed some success abroad, especially in Japan. It was not until their second album Life that an international reputation was secured...
(and especially promiently Mercutio's wild transvestite dancing to the disco anthem Young Hearts Run Free
Young Hearts Run Free
"Young Hearts Run Free" is a disco song by American soul singer Candi Staton. Released in 1976 from the album of the same title, it spent a week at number one on the Hot Soul Singles chart. It also peaked at number twenty on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Along with the tracks: "Run To Me"...
) led to two hit soundtrack albums
Romeo + Juliet (soundtrack)
William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet: Music from the Motion Picture is the soundtrack to the 1996 film of the same name. The soundtrack contained two separate releases: the first containing popular music from the film and the second containing the score to the film composed by Nellee Hooper, Craig...
.
Mixed reviews greeted the endeavor, including Luhrmann's decision to delete the reconciliation of the feuding families, thus undermining the play's original ending and its lesson concerning the price of peace. Todd McCarthy, in Variety, summed up: "as irritating and glib as some of it may be, there is indisputably a strong vision here that has been worked out in considerable detail." As Zeffirelli's version had done before it, Baz Luhrmann's film broke the record for the highest-grossing Shakespeare film of all time, taking $144m worldwide.
Other performances
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...
, which inspired a burlesque by Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
: both of which are now lost. Vitagraph
Vitagraph Studios
American Vitagraph was a United States movie studio, founded by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York. By 1907 it was the most prolific American film production company, producing many famous silent films. It was bought by Warner Bros...
produced a ten-minute version in 1908 which has survived, featuring Florence Lawrence
Florence Lawrence
Florence Lawrence was a Canadian inventor and silent film actress. She is often referred to as "The First Movie Star." When she was popular, she was known as "The Biograph Girl," "The Imp Girl," and "The Girl of a Thousand Faces." Lawrence appeared in more than 270 films for various motion...
. Gerolamo Lo Savio shot an ambitious version on location in Verona
Verona
Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...
for Film d'Arte Italiana. Edwin and Gertrude Thanhouser produced a spectacular version in the USA. In 1916, Metro
Metro Pictures
Metro Pictures Corporation was an American motion picture production company founded in late 1915 by Richard A. Rowland . Louis B. Mayer who worked for Metro Pictures Corporation early on. It is not to be confused with MGM which is a much later franchise concerning itself, Goldwyn and Louis B....
and Fox produced versions of the play as star-vehicles, the former featuring Francis X. Bushman
Francis X. Bushman
Francis Xavier Bushman was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. His matinee idol career started in 1911 in the silent film His Friend's Wife, but it did not survive the silent screen era....
as Romeo, and the latter
Romeo and Juliet (1916 film)
Romeo and Juliet is a 1916 silent drama film directed by J. Gordon Edwards and starring Theda Bara. The film shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where Fox many early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based there at the beginning of the 20th century...
featuring Theda Bara
Theda Bara
Theda Bara , born Theodosia Burr Goodman, was an American silent film actress – one of the most popular of her era, and one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp" . The term "vamp" soon became a popular slang term for a sexually predatory woman...
(usually famous for "vamp" roles) as the innocent Juliet. The play was first heard on film in The Hollywood Revue of 1929
The Hollywood Revue of 1929
The Hollywood Revue of 1929 is a 1929 part Technicolor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer American musical-comedy film. It was the studio's second feature-length musical, and one of the earliest ventures into the talkie format. Produced by Harry Rapf and directed by Chuck Riesner, the film brought together some...
, in which John Gilbert
John Gilbert (actor)
John Gilbert was an American actor and a major star of the silent film era.Known as "the great lover," he rivaled even Rudolph Valentino as a box office draw...
recited the balcony scene opposite Norma Shearer as Juliet, who would later play the same role in George Cukor's feature version.
Renato Castellani
Renato Castellani
Renato Castellani was an Italian film director and screenwriter.- Filmography :*The Iron Crown *Un colpo di pistola *Zazà...
won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
for his 1954 film of Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet (1954 film)
- External links :...
. His film contains interpolated scenes intended to establish the class system
Social class
Social classes are economic or cultural arrangements of groups in society. Class is an essential object of analysis for sociologists, political scientists, economists, anthropologists and social historians. In the social sciences, social class is often discussed in terms of 'social stratification'...
and Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
of Renaissance Verona, and the nature of the feud. Some of Castellani's changes have been criticised as ineffective: interpolated dialogue is often banal, and the Prince's appearances are reimagined as formal hearings: undermining the spontaneity of Benvolio's defence of Romeo's behaviour in the duel scene. The major supporting roles are vastly reduced, including that of the nurse; Mercutio becomes (in the words of Daniel Rosenthal) "the tiniest of cameos" and Friar Laurence "an irritating ditherer". Castellani's most prominent changes related to Romeo's character, cutting back or removing scenes involving his parents, Benvolio and Mercutio in order to highlight Romeo's isolation, and inserting a parting scene in which Montague coldly pulls his banished son out of Lady Montague's farewell embrace. Another criticism made by film scholar Patricia Tatspaugh is that the realism of the settings, so carefully established throughout the film, "goes seriously off the rails when it come to the Capulets' vault". Castellani uses competing visual images in relation to the central characters: ominous grilles (and their shadows) contrasted with frequent optimistic shots of blue sky. A well-known stage Romeo, John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
, played Castellani's chorus (and would reprise the role in the 1978 BBC Shakespeare
BBC Television Shakespeare
The BBC Television Shakespeare was a set of television adaptations of the plays of William Shakespeare, produced by the BBC between 1978 and 1985.-Origins:...
version). Laurence Harvey
Laurence Harvey
Laurence Harvey was a Lithuanian-born actor who achieved fame in British and American films.- Early life :Harvey maintained throughout his life that his birth name was Laruschka Mischa Skikne. However, his legal name was Zvi Mosheh Skikne. He was the youngest of three boys born to Ber "Boris" and...
, as Romeo, was already an experienced screen actor, who would shortly take over roles intended for the late James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...
in Walk on the Wild Side
Walk on the Wild Side (film)
Walk on the Wild Side is a 1962 film directed by Edward Dmytryk, adapted from the 1956 novel A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren. The film had a star-studded cast, including Laurence Harvey, Capucine, Jane Fonda , Anne Baxter, and Barbara Stanwyck, and was scripted by John Fante. Nonetheless,...
and Summer and Smoke. By contrast, Susan Shentall, as Juliet, was a secretarial student who was discovered by the director in a London pub, and was cast for her "pale sweet skin and honey-blonde hair". She failed to rise to the demands of the role, and would marry shortly after the shoot, never returning to screen acting. Other parts were played by inexperienced actors, also: Mercutio was played by an architect, Montague by a gondolier from Venice, and the Prince by a novelist. Critics responded to the film as a piece of cinema (its visuals were especially admired in Italy, where it was filmed) but not as a performance of Shakespeare's play: Robert Hatch in The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
said "We had come to see a play... perhaps we should not complain that we were shown a sumptuous travelogue", and Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
's reviewer added that "Castellani's Romeo and Juliet is a fine film poem... Unfortunately it is not Shakespeare's poem!"
In 1992, Leon Garfield
Leon Garfield
Leon Garfield was a British writer of fiction. He is best known for his historical novels for children, though he also wrote for adults...
abridged the play to 25 minutes for the S4C
S4C
S4C , currently branded as S4/C, is a Welsh television channel broadcast from the capital, Cardiff. The first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speaking audience, it is the fifth oldest British television channel .The channel - initially broadcast on...
/Soyuzmultfilm
Soyuzmultfilm
Soyuzmultfilm is a Russian animation studio based in Moscow. Over the years it has gained international attention and respect, garnering numerous awards both at home and abroad. Noted for a great variety of style, it is regarded as the most influential animation studio of the former Soviet Union...
Shakespeare: The Animated Tales
Shakespeare: the Animated Tales
thumb|right|[[Banquo]] and [[Fleance]] from the "Macbeth" episode. Shakespeare: The Animated Tales comprised two six-part television series, first broadcast in 1992 and 1994...
series. Such drastic abridgement inevitably led to emphasising plot over character, and the Romeo and Juliet episode has been described as "almost absurdly frenetic". This episode was directed by Efim Gamburg, using cel animation
Traditional animation
Traditional animation, is an animation technique where each frame is drawn by hand...
.
The PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
series Wishbone
Wishbone (TV series)
Wishbone is a television show which aired from 1995 to 1998 and reruns from 1998 to 2001 in the United States featuring a Jack Russell Terrier of the same name. The main character, the talking dog Wishbone, lives with his owner Joe Talbot in the fictional modern town of Oakdale, Texas...
aired its fourth episode "Rosie, Oh! Rosie, Oh!" in 1995 featuring the titular Jack Russell terrier as Romeo Montague in a television stage production of Romeo and Juliet.
Adaptations
Les amants de Vérone
Les amants de Vérone is a 1949 French film directed by André Cayatte and loosely based on the William Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet. The film was a joint project of...
and the Czech 1960 Romeo, Juliet a Tma
Romeo, Juliet and Darkness
Romeo, Juliet and Darkness is a Czech drama film directed by Jiří Weiss. It was released in 1960. The film deals with the problems of young jewish woman hidden from the Gestapo by his student lover.-Reception:...
. As a result of this ubiquity, any film about young love and its challenges will court comparison with Romeo and Juliet, as Roseanna McCoy
Roseanna McCoy
Roseanna McCoy is a 1949 American drama film directed by Irving Reis. The screenplay by John Collier, based on the 1947 novel of the same title by Alberta Hannum, is a romanticized and semi-fictionalized account of the Hatfield-McCoy feud.-Plot:...
did in 1949, and two James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...
films - East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause
Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments...
- did in the 1950s.
In 1960, Peter Ustinov
Peter Ustinov
Peter Alexander Ustinov CBE was an English actor, writer and dramatist. He was also renowned as a filmmaker, theatre and opera director, stage designer, author, screenwriter, comedian, humourist, newspaper and magazine columnist, radio broadcaster and television presenter...
's stage parody of Romeo and Juliet, Romanoff and Juliet
Romanoff and Juliet (film)
Romanoff and Juliet is a 1961 feature film adaptation of the play of the same name released by Universal Pictures. Peter Ustinov wrote the screenplay, directed, and starred in the film...
was filmed - dramatising true love interfering with the cold-war superpowers' attempts to control the fictional state of Concordia.
In 1980 an episode of the anime Astro Boy was based on the Romeo and Juliet story. There were two rival car and robot companies, which racer Robio falls in love with Robiette of the rival company. At the end the two young lovers get smooshed together by both their fathers driving into each other, and after that they two rivals give up the fight, and Astro remarks that now Robio and Robiette will be together forever.
The success of the 1957 stage musical West Side Story
West Side Story
West Side Story is an American musical with a script by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and choreographed by Jerome Robbins...
was instrumental in making Shakespeare a presence in modern popular and youth culture. The book was written by Arthur Laurents
Arthur Laurents
Arthur Laurents was an American playwright, stage director and screenwriter.After writing scripts for radio shows after college and then training films for the U.S...
, with music by Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
, and choreography by Jerome Robbins
Jerome Robbins
Jerome Robbins was an American theater producer, director, and choreographer known primarily for Broadway Theater and Ballet/Dance, but who also occasionally directed films and directed/produced for television. His work has included everything from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater...
. Widely admired, and the winner of ten Oscars, the 1961 film of the show - set among New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
gangs - does not aim for a realistic portrayal of New York gang cluture: in the opening sequence the Jets and the Sharks trade dance-steps instead of blows. The Jets are a gang of white youths, equivalent to Shakespeare's Montagues; the Sharks, equivalent to the Capulets, are Puerto Rican. Unlike Shakespeare who included relationships between his young lovers and the older generation (the parents, and parent-substitutes such as the Nurse and Friar Laurence) West Side Story keeps its focus firmly on the youth, with only peripheral roles for Doc, the soda-shop owner, and police officers Schrank and Krupke. Tony (played by Richard Beymer
Richard Beymer
George Richard Beymer, Jr. is an American actor known for playing Tony in the 1961 film version of West Side Story and Ben Horne on the 1990 television series Twin Peaks.-Life and career:...
, singing dubbed by Jimmy Bryant) is the play's Romeo and Maria (Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...
, dubbed by Marni Nixon
Marni Nixon
Marni Nixon is an American soprano and playback singer for featured actresses in movie musicals. She has also spent much of her career performing in concerts with major symphony orchestras around the world and in operas and musicals throughout the United States.-Biography:Born Margaret Nixon...
) is its Juliet. Maria's fiery brother Bernardo (George Chakiris
George Chakiris
George Chakiris is an American-Greek dancer, singer and actor.-Early life:Chakiris was born in Norwood, Ohio, to Steven and Zoe Chakiris, immigrants from Greece. Chakiris studied at the American School of Dance....
) combines the Lord Capulet and Tybalt roles. The film's ending has been praised for achieving the tragedy of Shakespeare's play without recourse to magic potions or fateful bad timing.
In 1996, Troma Studios
Troma Entertainment
Troma Entertainment is an American independent film production and distribution company founded by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz in 1974.The company produces low-budget independent movies that play on 1950s horror with elements of farce...
and director Lloyd Kaufman
Lloyd Kaufman
Lloyd Kaufman is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and occasional actor. With producer Michael Herz, he is the co-founder of Troma Entertainment film studio, and the director of many of their feature films, including The Toxic Avenger and Tromeo and Juliet. Kaufman also serves as...
filmed Tromeo and Juliet
Tromeo and Juliet
Tromeo and Juliet is a 1996 independent transgressive comedy film adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet from Troma Entertainment...
, a transgressive
Cinema of Transgression
The Cinema of Transgression is a term coined by Nick Zedd in 1985 to describe a New York City, United States based underground film movement, consisting of a loose-knit group of like-minded artists using shock value and humor in their work...
"trash/punk" adaptation of the play, set in present-day Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
and featuring Lemmy (of Motörhead) as its chorus. Sporting the tagline "Body piercing. Kinky sex. Dismemberment. The things that made Shakespeare great.", Tromeo and Juliet premiered at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes International Film Festival , is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres including documentaries from around the world. Founded in 1946, it is among the world's most prestigious and publicized film festivals...
and won several awards at independent horror and fantasy film festivals. Despite positive reviews from The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
, Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
and Variety, Shakespeare scholar Daniel Rosenthal described Tromeo as "the nadir
Nadir
The nadir is the direction pointing directly below a particular location; that is, it is one of two vertical directions at a specified location, orthogonal to a horizontal flat surface there. Since the concept of being below is itself somewhat vague, scientists define the nadir in more rigorous...
of screen Shakespeare", calling it a "tedious, appallingly acted feast of mutilation and softcore sex". The film's screenwriter, James Gunn, went on to have a successful Hollywood career writing the Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo (film)
Scooby-Doo is a 2002 American comedy film based on the Hanna-Barbera television cartoon series Scooby-Doo about a group of young detectives and their talking dog. It is the first installment in the Scooby-Doo live action film series...
film adaptations and the critically acclaimed Slither.
Cheah Chee-Kong's 2000 Singaporean film Chicken Rice War
Chicken Rice War
Chicken Rice War is a Singaporean film released in 2000 by Raintree Pictures. It is an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet in a Singaporean setting, where fierce competition between rival Chicken Rice hawkers resulted in bitter enmity...
(Jiyuan Qiaohe) adapts Romeo and Juliet as a lowbrow romantic comedy set amidst the rivalry between two adjacent rice stalls. The central characters (Fenson Pierre Png
Pierre Png
Pierre Png is a Peranakan Chinese Singaporean MediaCorp television and film actor and comedian who works on both Channel 5 and Channel 8 . He is best known for his role as Phua Chu-Beng in Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd and as Mo Yangyang in Holland V...
and Audrey Lum May Yee) are cast as Romeo and Juliet in a production of Shakespeare's play, staged in a car park, which their families manage to ruin through their rivalry. The comic mood is underpinned by cheerful songs from Tanya Chua
Tanya Chua
Tanya Chua is a Golden Melody Award-winning Singaporean singer and songwriter.-Music career:A former business administration student at Singapore Polytechnic, Chua started out singing in English, releasing her first English album, Bored, in 1997...
. The film won the Discovery Award at the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival is a publicly-attended film festival held each September in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, 339 films from 59 countries were screened at 32 screens in downtown Toronto venues...
.
In 2005, Romeo and Juliet became a high-profile six-minute H&M
H&M
H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB is a Swedish retail-clothing company, known for its fast-fashion clothing offerings for women, men, teenagers and children....
advertising campaign, directed by David LaChapelle
David LaChapelle
David LaChapelle is a photographer and director who works in the fields of fashion, advertising, and fine art photography, and is noted for his surreal, unique, sexualized, and often humorous style.-Early life:...
, featuring Tamyra Gray
Tamyra Gray
Tamyra Monica Gray is an American actress, singer and songwriter, who finished fourth place on the first season of the musical reality competition American Idol in 2002. Record and television executive Simon Cowell — who judged the show for nine seasons — was disappointed when she was voted off...
as Juliet and Gus Carr as Romeo, to a musical background sung by Mary J. Blige
Mary J. Blige
Mary Jane Blige is an American singer-songwriter, record producer and occasional actress. She is a recipient of nine Grammy Awards and four American Music Awards, and has recorded eight multi-platinum albums. She is the only artist with Grammy Award wins in Pop, Rap, Gospel, and R&B. Blige has...
. The play has also been used to advertise Polo mints and Rolo
Rolo
Rolo is a brand of truncated-cone-shaped or frustum-shaped chocolates with a caramel centre, the shape resembling that of a shallow inverted bucket or tub or a traditional lampshade. They are made by Nestlé, except in the United States where production has been under licence by The Hershey Company...
. In 2006, Nate Parker
Nate Parker
Nate Parker is an American actor and musical performer who has appeared in The Secret Life of Bees, The Great Debaters, and Pride. In his recent roles, he has performed alongside Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker and Terrence Howard. Parker has overcome turbulence and turmoil in his life both as...
debuted as a male lead in Rome and Jewel, a hip-hop take on Romeo and Juliet.
In the 2005 anime Basilisk the story about two rival ninja
Ninja
A or was a covert agent or mercenary of feudal Japan specializing in unorthodox arts of war. The functions of the ninja included espionage, sabotage, infiltration, and assassination, as well as open combat in certain situations...
clans fighting each other but one of their members love each other is similar to that of Romeo and Juliet.
Films featuring performances, or composition
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
and Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
are the two plays which have most often been used in this way. Usually, Shakespeare's story has some parallel or resonance with the main plot. Films featuring characters performing scenes from Romeo and Juliet include the 1912 and 1982 film versions of Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
' Nicholas Nickleby, Cured Hams (1927), Drama De Luxe (1927), Broadway Fever (1928), Les Amants de Vérone (1949), Marjorie Morningstar
Marjorie Morningstar (film)
Marjorie Morningstar is a 1958 melodrama film based on the 1955 novel of the same name. The film, released by Warner Bros. and directed by Irving Rapper tells a fictional coming of age story about a young Jewish girl in New York City in the 1950s...
(1958), Carry on Teacher
Carry On films
The Carry On films are a series of low-budget British comedy films, directed by Gerald Thomas and produced by Peter Rogers. They are an energetic mix of parody, farce, slapstick and double entendres....
(1959) Shakespeare Wallah
Shakespeare Wallah
Shakespeare Wallah is a 1965 Merchant Ivory Productions film. The story and screenplay are by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Madhur Jaffrey won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival for her performance...
(1965) and, significantly, Shakespeare in Love (1998).
The 1941 film Playmates
Playmates (1941 film)
Playmates is a comedy film directed by David Butler, and starring Kay Kyser and John Barrymore. This was Barrymore's final film.-Cast:*Kay Kyser as Kay Kyser*John Barrymore as John Barrymore*Lupe Vélez as Carmen Del Toro...
features bandleader Kay Kyser
Kay Kyser
James Kern Kyser was a popular bandleader and radio personality of the 1930s and 1940s.-Early years:He was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, the son of pharmacists Paul Bynum Kyser and Emily Royster Kyser. Editor Vermont C. Royster was his cousin...
and Shakespearean actor John Barrymore
John Barrymore
John Sidney Blyth , better known as John Barrymore, was an acclaimed American actor. He first gained fame as a handsome stage actor in light comedy, then high drama and culminating in groundbreaking portrayals in Shakespearean plays Hamlet and Richard III...
playing themselves in a plot which involves Kyser producing an adaptation featuring "swing musician Romeo Smith and opera singer Juliet Jones, with Juliet's father, a devotee of classical music, as obstacle to their romance."
André Cayatte
André Cayatte
André Cayatte was a French New Wave filmmaker and lawyer, who became known for his films centering on themes of crime, justice, and moral responsibility, themes which Cayatte persisted in affirming regardless of changing contemporary attitudes.Some of Cayatte's earlier films that covered these...
's Les Amants de Vérone (France, 1949) features Georgia (Anouk Aimée
Anouk Aimée
Anouk Aimée is a French film actress. Aimée has appeared in 70 films since 1947. She began her film career in 1947 at age 14. In 1958 she portrayed the tragic artist Jeanne Hébuterne in the film Les Amants de Montparnasse...
), the daughter of the declining Maglia family (roughly the equivalent of Shakespeare's Capulets) who meets her Romeo in working-class Angelo (Serge Reggiani
Serge Reggiani
Serge Reggiani was an Italian-born French singer and actor. He was born in Reggio Emilia, Italy and moved to France with his parents at the age of eight...
) while working as stand-ins for the actors playing Romeo and Juliet in a film of the play. The film is a melodramatic reworking of the Romeo and Juliet story, centering on the beauty and passion of the protagonists, and ending with their tragic deaths.
The conceit of dramatising Shakespeare writing Romeo and Juliet has been used several times. The oddball 1944 B-movie Time Flies features the comedy duo Susie and Bill Barton, who, time travelling, encounter a Shakespeare struggling for words for his balcony scene, which Susie (Evelyn Dall
Evelyn Dall
Evelyn Dall was an American singer and actress.-Career:Born in The Bronx, New York City Dall began her career in short films and in supporting roles on Broadway. In 1935, she was invited to become the female vocalist for Bert Ambrose and his Orchestra, in the UK, where she remained until 1946...
) supplies from memory, while Bill interrupts with quips. John Madden
John Madden (director)
John Philip Madden is an English director of theatre, film, television, and radio.- Biography :Madden was educated at Clifton College. He was in the same house as friend and fellow director Roger Michell. He began his career in British independent films, and graduated from the University of...
's 1998 Shakespeare in Love depicts Shakespeare's process in composing Romeo and Juliet against the backdrop of his own doomed love affair. Writers Marc Norman
Marc Norman
Marc Norman is an American screenwriter.He won, with Tom Stoppard the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, in the 71st Academy Awards of 1998, for his script of Shakespeare in Love; he also shared in the Best Picture Oscar for the film as co-producer...
and Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
exploited another commonplace of Shakespeare-related films, which scholar Tony Howard describes as the "playing Shakespeare is a gateway to self-fulfilment" plot. As he explains it, "an ill-matched crew of Elizabethan theatre people are transformed and united by the process of creating Romeo and Juliet". The film's climax includes Judi Dench
Judi Dench
Dame Judith Olivia "Judi" Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA is an English film, stage and television actress.Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo...
's Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
declaring that Shakespeare's play "can show us the very truth and nature of love."
Seminal screen performances
For comprehensive list, see Romeo and Juliet (films)Romeo and Juliet (films)
Cinematic adaptations of the William Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet include:* Romeo and Juliet , French title: Roméo et Juliette* Romeo and Juliet , * Romeo and Juliet ,...
.
- Romeo and JulietRomeo and Juliet (1900 film)Roméo et Juliette was a 1900 French film adaptation of the classic and famous William Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet.This film version was directed by Clément Maurice, starred Emilio Cossira, and is believed to be the earliest film adaptation of the Shakespeare classic.The film was produced by...
(France, 1900)- Clément Maurice director
- Emilio Cossira as Romeo
- Romeo and JulietRomeo and Juliet (1908 film)The first ever American film version of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was a silent film short made in 1908 made by Vitagraph Studios. Directed by J. Stuart Blackton, it was filmed in Central Park in Manhattan, New York....
(USA, silent, 1908)- J. Stuart BlacktonJ. Stuart BlacktonJames Stuart Blackton , usually known as J. Stuart Blackton, was an Anglo-American film producer of the Silent Era, the founder of Vitagraph Studios and among the first filmmakers to use the techniques of stop-motion and drawn animation...
director - Florence LawrenceFlorence LawrenceFlorence Lawrence was a Canadian inventor and silent film actress. She is often referred to as "The First Movie Star." When she was popular, she was known as "The Biograph Girl," "The Imp Girl," and "The Girl of a Thousand Faces." Lawrence appeared in more than 270 films for various motion...
as Juliet - Paul PanzerPaul PanzerPaul Panzer was a German-American silent film actor. He appeared in 333 films between 1905 and 1952. Panzer was best known for playing Koerner/Raymond Owen in The Perils of Pauline....
as Romeo
- J. Stuart Blackton
- Romeo and JulietRomeo and Juliet (1916 film)Romeo and Juliet is a 1916 silent drama film directed by J. Gordon Edwards and starring Theda Bara. The film shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where Fox many early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based there at the beginning of the 20th century...
(USA, silent, 1916)- J. Gordon EdwardsJ. Gordon EdwardsJ. Gordon Edwards was a Canadian-born film director, producer, and a writer who began his career as a stage actor and as a stage director. He made his directorial debut on film in 1914's St. Elmo. Soon went on helming all of the Fox studio's mega-budget spectacles, including all of actress Theda...
director - Theda BaraTheda BaraTheda Bara , born Theodosia Burr Goodman, was an American silent film actress – one of the most popular of her era, and one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp" . The term "vamp" soon became a popular slang term for a sexually predatory woman...
as Juliet
- J. Gordon Edwards
- Romeo and JulietRomeo and Juliet (1936 film)Romeo and Juliet is a 1936 American film adapted from the play by Shakespeare, directed by George Cukor from a screenplay by Talbot Jennings...
(USA, 1936)- George CukorGeorge CukorGeorge Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
director - Norma ShearerNorma ShearerEdith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...
as Juliet - Leslie HowardLeslie Howard (actor)Leslie Howard was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. Among his best-known roles was Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind and roles in Berkeley Square , Of Human Bondage , The Scarlet Pimpernel , The Petrified Forest , Pygmalion , Intermezzo , Pimpernel Smith...
as Romeo - John BarrymoreJohn BarrymoreJohn Sidney Blyth , better known as John Barrymore, was an acclaimed American actor. He first gained fame as a handsome stage actor in light comedy, then high drama and culminating in groundbreaking portrayals in Shakespearean plays Hamlet and Richard III...
as Mercutio - Andy DevineAndy DevineAndrew Vabre "Andy" Devine was an American character actor and comic cowboy sidekick known for his distinctive raspy voice.-Early life:...
as Peter- The film received four Academy Award nominations:
- Outstanding ProductionAcademy Award for Best PictureThe Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
- Irving ThalbergIrving ThalbergIrving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff and make very profitable films.-Life and...
, producer - Best Actor in a Supporting RoleAcademy Award for Best Supporting ActorPerformance by an Actor in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
- Basil RathboneBasil RathboneSir Basil Rathbone, KBE, MC, Kt was an English actor. He rose to prominence in England as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in over 70 films, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, occasionally, horror films...
- as Tybalt - Best ActressAcademy Award for Best ActressPerformance by an Actress in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
- Norma ShearerNorma ShearerEdith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s... - Best Art DirectionAcademy Award for Best Art DirectionThe Academy Awards are the oldest awards ceremony for achievements in motion pictures. The Academy Award for Best Art Direction recognizes achievement in art direction on a film. The films below are listed with their production year, so the Oscar 2000 for best art direction went to a film from 1999...
- Cedric GibbonsCedric GibbonsAustin Cedric Gibbons was an Irish American art director who was one of the most important and influential in the field in the history of American film. He also made a great impact on motion picture theater architecture through the 1930s to 1950s, the period considered the golden-era of theater...
, Fredric HopeFredric HopeFredric Hope was an American art director. He won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction for the film The Merry Widow.He was born in New Brighton, Pennsylvania and died in Hollywood, California....
and Edwin B. Willis
- Outstanding Production
- The film received four Academy Award nominations:
- George Cukor
- Romeo and JulietRomeo and Juliet (1954 film)- External links :...
(UK, 1954)- Renato CastellaniRenato CastellaniRenato Castellani was an Italian film director and screenwriter.- Filmography :*The Iron Crown *Un colpo di pistola *Zazà...
director - Susan Shentall as Juliet
- Laurence HarveyLaurence HarveyLaurence Harvey was a Lithuanian-born actor who achieved fame in British and American films.- Early life :Harvey maintained throughout his life that his birth name was Laruschka Mischa Skikne. However, his legal name was Zvi Mosheh Skikne. He was the youngest of three boys born to Ber "Boris" and...
as Romeo - Flora RobsonFlora RobsonDame Flora McKenzie Robson DBE was an English actress, renowned as a character actress, who played roles ranging from queens to villainesses.-Early life:...
as the Nurse - Mervyn JohnsMervyn JohnsMervyn Johns was a Welsh film and television character actor. He was a mainstay of Ealing Studios.Among his dozens of film roles were Walter Craig in Dead of Night , the Church Warden in Went the Day Well? and Bob Cratchit in Scrooge...
as Friar Laurence.
- Renato Castellani
- Romeo i DzhulyettaRomeo and Juliet (1955 film)Romeo and Juliet is a 1955 Soviet ballet film directed by Lev Arnshtam. It was entered into the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. -Cast:* Galina Ulanova - Juliet* Yuri Zhdanov - Romeo * I. Olenina - Juliet's nurse...
(USSR, 1955)- Lev ArnshtamLev ArnshtamLev Oskarovich Arnshtam was a Soviet film director and screenwriter. He directed nine films between 1936 and 1967.-Filmography:* Girl Friends * Friends ...
director - Galina UlanovaGalina UlanovaGalina Sergeyevna Ulánova is frequently cited as being one of the greatest 20th Century ballerinas. Her flat in Moscow is designated a national museum, and there are monuments to her in Saint Petersburg and Stockholm....
as Juliet - Yuri ZhdanovYuri ZhdanovYuri Andreyevich Zhdanov was a Russian chemistry professor and rector of the University of Rostov. He was the son of Soviet politician Andrei Zhdanov and a former husband of Joseph Stalin's daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva....
as Romeo
- Lev Arnshtam
- Romeo and JulietRomeo and Juliet (1968 film)Romeo and Juliet is a 1968 British-Italian cinematic adaptation of the William Shakespeare play of the same name.The film was directed and co-written by Franco Zeffirelli, and stars Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. It won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design; it was also...
(Italy, 1968)- Franco ZeffirelliFranco ZeffirelliFranco Zeffirelli KBE is an Italian director and producer of films and television. He is also a director and designer of operas and a former senator for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party....
director - Olivia HusseyOlivia HusseyOlivia Hussey is an Argentinian actress who became famous for her role as Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's Academy Award-winning 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet. For this role she won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year - Actress as well as the David di Donatello for best actress...
as Juliet - Leonard WhitingLeonard WhitingLeonard Whiting is a British actor who starred as Romeo in the 1968 Zeffirelli film version of Romeo and Juliet opposite Olivia Hussey's Juliet, a role which earned him the Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actor....
as Romeo- The film won two Academy AwardsAcademy AwardsAn Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
:- best cinematographyAcademy Award for Best CinematographyThe Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work in one particular motion picture.-History:...
- best costume designAcademy Award for Costume DesignThe Academy Award for Best Costume Design is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for achievement in film costume design....
.
- best cinematography
- It had two further Academy AwardAcademy AwardsAn Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
nominations:- Best DirectorAcademy Award for DirectingThe Academy Award for Achievement in Directing , usually known as the Best Director Oscar, is one of the Awards of Merit presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to directors working in the motion picture industry...
- Best PictureAcademy Award for Best PictureThe Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
.
- Best Director
- The film won two Academy Awards
- Franco Zeffirelli
- BBC Television ShakespeareBBC Television ShakespeareThe BBC Television Shakespeare was a set of television adaptations of the plays of William Shakespeare, produced by the BBC between 1978 and 1985.-Origins:...
Romeo and Juliet (TV, UK, 1978), released in the USA as part of the "Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare" series. - The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (USA, 1982)
- William Woodman director
- Blanche BakerBlanche Baker-Personal life:Born Blanche Garfein in New York City, she is the daughter of actress Carroll Baker and director Jack Garfein. She attended Wellesley College from 1974 until 1976.-Career:...
as Juliet - Alex Hyde-WhiteAlex Hyde-WhiteAlex Punch Hyde-White is an English born, US raised film and television actor. He is sometimes credited as Alex Hyde White. In 1978 he signed with Universal Pictures as one of the last "contract players" in Hollywood, in a group that included Lindsay Wagner, Andrew Stevens and Sharon...
as Romeo
- The Animated Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet (TV, Russia and UK, 1992)
- Yefim GamburgYefim GamburgYefim Abramovich Gamburg was a Soviet and Russian animator, who is best known for directing Passion of Spies, Blue Puppy and Dog in Boots. He graduated from the Moscow Pedagogical Institute, since 1955 he worked for Soyuzmultfilm studio...
director - Felicity KendalFelicity KendalFelicity Ann Kendal, CBE is an English actor known for her television and stage work.Born in 1946, Kendal spent much of her childhood in India, where her father managed a touring repertory company. First appearing on stage at the age of nine months, Kendal appeared in her first film, Shakespeare...
as narrator - Clare HolmanClare HolmanClare Margaret Holman is an English actress, perhaps most famous for her role of forensic pathologist Dr. Laura Hobson in the television series Inspector Morse and Lewis.-Acting:...
as the voice of Juliet - Linus RoacheLinus RoacheLinus William Roache is an English actor.-Early life:Roache was born in Manchester, the son of Coronation Street actor William Roache and actress Anna Cropper. Roache was educated at Bishop Luffa Church of England School in Chichester, West Sussex and at the independent Rydal School in Colwyn Bay,...
as the voice of Romeo
- Yefim Gamburg
- Romeo+Juliet (aka “William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet”) (USA, 1996)
- Baz LuhrmannBaz LuhrmannMark Anthony "Baz" Luhrmann is an Australian film director, screenwriter, and producer best known for The Red Curtain Trilogy, which includes his films Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!...
director - Claire DanesClaire DanesClaire Catherine Danes is an American actress of television, stage and film. She has appeared in roles as diverse as Angela Chase in My So-Called Life, as Juliet in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, as Kate Brewster in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, as Yvaine in Stardust and as Temple Grandin in...
as Juliet - Leonardo DiCaprioLeonardo DiCaprioLeonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio is an American actor and film producer. He has received many awards, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Aviator , and has been nominated by the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild and the British Academy of Film and Television...
as Romeo- The film received one OscarAcademy AwardsAn Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
nomination for Best Art Direction and Set Decoration (Catherine MartinCatherine MartinCatherine Martin is an Australian costume designer, production designer, set designer, and film producer.-Biography:Catherine Martin went to school at North Sydney Girls High School...
and Brigitte Broch)
- The film received one Oscar
- Baz Luhrmann
Films/books inspired by the play
- Beneath the 12 Mile Reef (USA, 1953) transposes the general plot of the play to rival fishing families in Depression-era Florida.
- Romanoff and JulietRomanoff and Juliet (film)Romanoff and Juliet is a 1961 feature film adaptation of the play of the same name released by Universal Pictures. Peter Ustinov wrote the screenplay, directed, and starred in the film...
(USA, 1960) is a film of Peter UstinovPeter UstinovPeter Alexander Ustinov CBE was an English actor, writer and dramatist. He was also renowned as a filmmaker, theatre and opera director, stage designer, author, screenwriter, comedian, humourist, newspaper and magazine columnist, radio broadcaster and television presenter...
's theatrical Cold War adaptation. - West Side StoryWest Side Story (film)West Side Story is a 1961 musical film directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. The film is an adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was adapted from William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. It stars Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno,...
(USA, 1961) is the film of a BroadwayBroadway theatreBroadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
musical adaptation of the Romeo and Juliet story, set in 1950s New York, by Stephen SondheimStephen SondheimStephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
and Leonard BernsteinLeonard BernsteinLeonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
- Robert WiseRobert WiseRobert Earl Wise was an American sound effects editor, film editor, film producer and director...
and Jerome RobbinsJerome RobbinsJerome Robbins was an American theater producer, director, and choreographer known primarily for Broadway Theater and Ballet/Dance, but who also occasionally directed films and directed/produced for television. His work has included everything from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater...
directors - Natalie WoodNatalie WoodNatalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...
as Maria - Richard BeymerRichard BeymerGeorge Richard Beymer, Jr. is an American actor known for playing Tony in the 1961 film version of West Side Story and Ben Horne on the 1990 television series Twin Peaks.-Life and career:...
as Tony
- Robert Wise
- Romie-0 and Julie-8Romie-0 and Julie-8Romie-0 and Julie-8 is the third animated television special made by Nelvana Limited, inspired by William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet...
(Canada, 1979) is a made-for-television animated film in which the two leads are depicted as robots made by rival companies who fall in love.- Clive A. SmithClive A. SmithClive A. Smith is a British expatriate director and animator who, with Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert, founded Canadian animation studio Nelvana in 1971...
, director - Greg Swanson as the voice of Romie-0
- Donann Cavin as the voice of Julie-8
- Clive A. Smith
- Love Is All There IsLove Is All There IsLove Is All There Is is a 1996 romantic comedy film directed by Joseph Bologna and Renee Taylor, who also both star in the movie.- Plot :...
is a comic take on the tragic story, set in The BronxThe BronxThe Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
, involving two Italian immigrant families who own opposing restaurants.- Nathaniel MarstonNathaniel MarstonNathaniel Marston is an American actor.Marston appeared as Eddie Silva on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns from 1998 to 2000. The role earned him a Soap Opera Digest Award nomination for "Outstanding Male Newcomer." He next portrayed Al Holden on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live from 2001...
as Rosario (the Romeo character) - Angelina JolieAngelina JolieAngelina Jolie is an American actress. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and was named Hollywood's highest-paid actress by Forbes in 2009 and 2011. Jolie is noted for promoting humanitarian causes as a Goodwill Ambassador for the...
as Gina (the Juliet character)
- Nathaniel Marston
- Romeo Must DieRomeo Must DieRomeo Must Die is a 2000 martial arts film directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak. Starring Jet Li, Aaliyah, Anthony Anderson, Delroy Lindo, Isaiah Washington, Russell Wong, and features action and fight choreography by Corey Yuen...
(2000) is a martial arts film variation on the Romeo and Juliet theme.- Andrzej BartkowiakAndrzej BartkowiakAndrzej Bartkowiak, A.S.C. is a Polish cinematographer and director.In the early 1980s, Bartkowiak was cinematographer on three films that received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture: The Verdict, Terms of Endearment, and Prizzi's Honor.As cinematographer he has collaborated with several...
director - Jet LiJet LiThe fame gained by his sports winnings led to a career as a martial arts film star, beginning in mainland China and then continuing into Hong Kong. Li acquired his screen name in 1982 in the Philippines when a publicity company thought his real name was too hard to pronounce...
as Han - AaliyahAaliyahAaliyah Dana Haughton , who performed under the mononym Aaliyah , was an American R&B recording artist, actress and model. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in Detroit, Michigan. At the age of 10, she appeared on the television show Star Search and performed in concert alongside...
as Trish O’Day
- Andrzej Bartkowiak
- Amar te dueleAmar te dueleAmar te duele is a 2002 dramatic film written by Carolina Rivera and directed by Fernando Sariñana. It is based on the classic play “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare. In the story, both families hate each other because they belong to different social classes...
(2002) is a Mexican film variation on the Romeo and Juliet theme about a couple that are from different social classes.- Marta Higareda as Renata (the Juliet character)
- Luis Fernando Peña as Ulises (the Romeo character)
- حبك نار (Hobak Nar or Your love is fire) (Egypt, 2004) is an Egyptian film, setting the tragedy in modern Cairo.
- Pizza My Heart (film) (USA, TV, 2005) is a comic adaptation set in Verona, New JerseyVerona, New JerseyVerona is a township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township population was 13,332.In 2008, New Jersey Monthly magazine ranked Verona #1 in Essex County and #3 in New Jersey as "Top Places to Live in New Jersey".-History:Verona and several...
.
- Romeo & Juliet: Sealed with a KissRomeo & Juliet: Sealed with a KissRomeo & Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss is a 2006 animated fantasy film about two star-crossed seals from warring families that fall in love against their parents' wishes. It loosely follows the traditional play, Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare and was released in Europe on July 22, 2006 and on...
(USA, 2006) is an animated adaptation of the story told with seals and features a kid-friendly happy ending.
- Romeo x JulietRomeo x Julietis a TV anime series, loosely based on William Shakespeare's classical play, Romeo and Juliet, along with numerous references and characters from other Shakespearean plays. Though the anime borrows mostly from Shakespeare's story, the manga adaptation differs extensively from the original...
(Japan, TV, 2007) is an animeAnimeis the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
series derived from the play.- Brina PalenciaBrina PalenciaBrina Michelle Palencia is an American voice actress, singer, and ADR director who works for Funimation Entertainment. She has provided voices for a number of English language versions of Japanese anime films and television series.Apart from her adult female voices, she has been cast in younger...
as Juliet - Chris BurnettChris BurnettChris Burnett is an American saxophone player, composer, veteran of US military jazz bands and band leader. Born in Olathe, Kansas, Burnett's family moved relatively frequently during his early childhood due to his father being a member of the active US military service...
as Romeo
- Brina Palencia
- Episode 33 of the anime series KodochaKodochais a manga series by Miho Obana, helped periodically by her sister, Kaori Obana. The series is commonly known under the name Kodocha. The manga won the 1998 Kodansha Manga Award for shōjo. In the year 2007, At the American Anime Awards the anime was nominated for best comedy anime...
is loosely based upon the play, in which the boys and girls of Class 6-3 are in a big feud, during which supporting characters Tsuyoshi Sasaki and Aya Sugita play roles similar to Romeo and Juliet.
- Gnomeo and JulietGnomeo and JulietGnomeo & Juliet is a 2011 computer-animated family comedy film based on William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. The film is directed by Kelly Asbury, and the two main characters are voiced by James McAvoy and Emily Blunt. The film was released on , 2011.-Plot:Mrs. Montague and Mr. Capulet are...
(2011) closely follows the plot of the original play, but using gnomes, renaming Romeo "Gnomeo", setting it in backyards in an England suburb. It has a lot of Shakesphearian comedy, as well as humor relative to the modern day. Shakespheare himself appears in the movie, but as a statue. It has a happy ending, though it seems at first the protagonists were smashed by the giant groundskeeping machine, the Terrafirminator.
Significant parallels
- Theatre of BloodTheatre of BloodTheatre of Blood is a horror film starring Vincent Price as vengeful actor Edward Lionheart and Diana Rigg as his daughter Edwina Lionheart. The cast includes such distinguished actors as Harry Andrews, Coral Browne, Robert Coote, Jack Hawkins, Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Joan Hickson, Robert...
features a Shakespearean actor who takes poetic revenge on the critics who denied him recognition, including a fencing scene inspired by Romeo and Juliet. - Shakespeare in LoveShakespeare in LoveShakespeare in Love is a 1998 British-American comedy film directed by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard....
dramatises the writing and first performance of Romeo and Juliet. - The Lion King II: Simba's PrideThe Lion King II: Simba's PrideThe Lion King II: Simba's Pride is a 1998 American direct-to-video animated film released by Walt Disney Home Video on October 27, 1998. The film is the sequel to the 1994 Disney animated film The Lion King...
features Simba's daughter, Kiara, in a forbidden romance with Scar's stepson, Kovu. - Butterfly LoversButterfly LoversThe Butterfly Lovers is a Chinese legend of a tragic love story of a pair of lovers, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai , whose names form the title of the story...
A Chinese legend, that was made into a cartoon film in 2004, that follows the storyline of Romeo and Juliet.
Further reading
- Buchanan, Judith. Shakespeare on Film (Harlow: Longman-Pearson, 2005), pp. 230–236 (on Luhrmann).
- Buchanan, Judith. Shakespeare on Silent Film: An Excellent Dumb Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 201–216 (on silent American Romeo and Juliet films).
- Martin, Jennifer L. "Tights vs. Tattoos: Filmic Interpretations of 'Romeo and Juliet'." The English Journal. 92.1 Shakespeare for a New Age (Sep 2002) pp. 41–46 doi:10.2307/821945.
- Lehmann, Courtney. "Strictly Shakespeare? Dead Letters, Ghostly Fathers, and the Cultural Pathology of Authorship in Baz Luhrmann's 'William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet'." Shakespeare Quarterly. 52.2 (Summer 2001) pp. 189–221.