Everyone knows the story, even those who never read it nor watched it performed. This is me. I’ve seen a few of the Bard’s plays, but I somehow missed this one. Here are my thoughts.
Romeo and Juliet is a stage play. To be performed on a stage, with stage props, for a play-going audience. As such, the flowery language and outsized behaviors fit the intended medium, the unreality of a theater stage. When the play is performed on location in gorgeous Tuscany, with real props and costumes, there becomes a certain dissonance between the real and theatrical. And the fact that all audio was recorded after filming and looped in during post adds to this dissonance.
Now, let’s talk about the infamous scene. Our heroes finally get together in the second act to consummate their marriage. Our director decided that the scene needed a little something extra. That something was nudity. I have no issue with that in principle, and the scene was done tastefully, but it is problematic for a couple reasons.
First, the leads were seventeen and fifteen. Special permission had to be granted for Hussey, who long downplayed the controversy. But to up the creepiness factor, Hussey did say that the 45 year old Zeffirelli fell in love with her during filming. He later called her his “unrequited love of my life”. Secondly, one week after I watched the film, Hussey and Whiting sued the studio, saying they were coerced into appearing nude. Coercing a minor to be filmed nude makes you a predator.
Controversy aside, I couldn’t get past the chasm between style and setting. It’s a hard thing to post a negative review of a work by the most influential English language writer, but a play is a play, and a movie is a movie. If you must craft one into the other, certain choices need to be made. AMRU 2.5.
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