Romeo And Juliet

4 Pages 991 Words

Romeo and Juliet 1968:1996

Romeo and Juliet is a timeless, classic love story written by William Shakespeare in 1594. This play tells the love story of “two star—crossed lovers” in Italy at the end of the sixteenth century. The title characters are Romeo and Juliet who happen to be the only children of two feuding families. Romeo is a Montague and Juliet is a Capulet. There have been different ways of portraying Romeo and Juliet, but the two most popular film versions portray two very different styles. Franco Zeferelli’s Romeo and Juliet was made in 1968, and is the film version most commonly shown in classrooms. The newest film version of this play is Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. He sets the classic story in a modern day setting. Both of these films are very similar, but also differ in many aspects. I will look at how both of these movies tell the same story, but how one director was able to change it to fit modern times.
Zeferelli’s film is the older and more classical version of Romeo and Juliet. He uses the setting of Verona, and the costumes that were appropriate to that time. He does take liberties with the dialogue, in that he shortens many of the monologues made by the characters. He also portrayed the use of swords, which were the weapons used at that time. In complete contrast to this Luhrmann made the decision to set this classic play in modern day Venice Beach. The costumes, setting, and swords were all updated to fit the styles of the 1990’s. He has the characters wearing modern day jeans and bright colored shirts and changes the swords to guns. To try and stay with the original characteristics of the play, the characters called their guns “Sword 9mm.” He also kept the language as Shakespeare had written it simply because that was something that he felt he could not change. Luhrmann may have updated the setting of the play, but he actually used a lot more of the written dialogue...