Essay: Impact of Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet (1968) on modern cinematic & societal relationships.

Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968), a remake of William Shakespeare’s play, and other movies like it including Randall Kleiser’s Grease(1978) and Robert Wise’s West Side Story (1961) impacted the society that we live in today and modern relationships with the way they romanticized the main characters relationship.
Where better to begin than with Franco Zeffirelli’s depiction of Romeo and Juliet it is a story as old as time. From the city of Verona, the Montague and the Capulet families are perpetually feuding. When Romeo (Leonard Whiting), a handsome young Montague, disregards convention by attending a Capulet ball, he falls in love with the beautiful Juliet (Olivia Hussey), a Capulet. After a very brief courtship, the two get married, creating even greater tension between their families. Franco Zeffirelli’s film is considered by many critics to be one of the best screen versions of Shakespeare’s classic love story which is why I chose it.
Zeffirelli’s first film as director was a version of The Taming of the Shrew (1967) which didn’t get a lot of attention. Zeffirelli’s major breakthrough came the year after when he presented two teenagers as Romeo and Juliet. The movie is still immensely popular and was for many years the standard adaptation of the play shown to students. The film earned $14.5 million in domestic rentals at the North American box office during 1969. It was also nominated for an academy award for best picture and best director. It was re-released in 1973 and earned $1.7 million in rentals. Long time Film critic Roger Ebert (1942–2013), for the Chicago Sun-Times wrote in his article Zeffirelli’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Remains the Benchmark. “I believe Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet is the most exciting film of Shakespeare ever made.” This quote proves that this movie was the biggest and most impactful movie on the story of Romeo and Juliet. This also show how big this movie really was in terms of leaving a lasting impression.
Olivia Hussey’s first appearance was on the London stage as Jenny in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, with Vanessa Redgrave. During the run of this play, Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli spotted her its said he noticed her because of her beauty and theatrical skill at just fifteen years old, eventually she was chosen out of 500 actresses to star as Juliet in Zeffirelli’s film version of Romeo and Juliet. Before her role as Juliet she had only been in two movies with very minor roles, The Battle of the Villa Fiorita and cup fever. Which both premiered in theaters in the year 1965. After her role as Juliet her career took off staring in over thirty movies including Black Christmas, psycho IV: the beginning, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. and ten television shows including Mary, Mother of Jesus, Murder, She Wrote, and Boy meets world. Some gamers may recognize her voice from the Star Wars video game series as Kasan Moor. Olivia, like most teen actors struggles with her fame. She took two years off from acting because she had developed an agoraphobia. As we learned through out the semester it is usually hard for teen actors who are exposed to the fame to adjust and continue to be successful. But Olivia prevailed and continued to have a very successful career.
Leonard Whiting’s first role on the big screen was as Romeo, but that didn’t stop him from getting the role. Leonard was a natural born performer, from the age of 12 he would sing at weddings and perform musicals in London. Eventually Leonard made it on to a production of Oliver as the Artful Dodger where he toured to Moscow and Berlin. While on tour he caught the attention of Franco Zeffirelli, and was chosen out off 300 actors who auditioned for the roll. When Zeffirelli was asked why he chose Leonard he said “He has a magnificent face, gentle melancholy, sweet, the kind of idealistic young man Romeo ought to be.” Leonard career in film dint go much further only appearing in six films after his debut. He officially retired from acting in the mid 70’s to pursue his true passion music. However he did return to the big screen in 2015 as the father in social suicide, along side none other than the Olivia Hussey. A perfect ending to both of their careers, playing the parents of Olivia’s biological daughter India Eisley catapulting her teen career coming around full circle.
Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet was nominated for a lot of awards in 1968 and ended up walking away with quite a bit of hardware. Winning two of the four categorizes they were nominated for in the academy awards including best cinematography and best costume design. The movie was also nominated for best picture, which lost to John Woolf’s Oliver!, and best director with also lost to Oliver!. Romeo and Juliet also won three out of the five nominations for the Golden Globes including English-language foreign film and both Leonard and Olivia won New Star of the Year. Cynthia Baron writes in her article Acting Choices/Filmic Choices “Franco Zeffirelli’s lush 1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet…provides clear evidence that choices about acting are on par with filmmakers’ choices about other cinematic elements.” Which goes to show how much effort went into finding the perfect actors. Zeffirelli even go so far as to make sure it looked realistic by hiring actually teenagers in this movie, which wasn’t common according to this class.
One of the ways that Romeo and Juliet effected the society we live in is by creating a law that most states in the united states abide by. It is actually called the Romeo and Juliet law in most states. Victoria Simpson beck talks about it in her writing Romeo & Juliet: Star-Crossed Lovers or Sex Offenders? as “Laws that set an age of consent to engage in sexual behavior are unique in that they are the only laws that can result in a child being both a victim and offender of a crime merely due to age. They are also unique because some states have used these laws in an attempt to reduce teen pregnancy rates.” She continues to talk about how this study was created to measure the use of age consent laws or statutory rape. This is obviously a big problem in todays society according to the article. The reason it is called the Romeo and Juliet law is because in the original play Romeo was depicted as about seven-teen years old while Juliet was depicted as just thirteen and in this movie there is a scene that implies that they had sex it even go so far as to show Olivia Hussey or Juliet topless as she scrambles out of bed. When Shakespeare wrote this in the 1500’s this age difference was far more common than it is now. Regardless we know that thirteen is far to young to determine whether or not you are ready to have sex, and since this movie glorifies that they named that law after it.
The story of Romeo and Juliet was such a strong narrative that it inspired remakes one of which being Robert Wise and Jerome Robins’ West Side Story (1961). West Side Story The film is an adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical of the same name, which was inspired by William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, Staring Natalie Wood as Maria, and Richard Beymer as tony. The film takes place during the summer of 1957 in the West Side of Manhattan. instead of the feud between the Montague and the Capulets there is tension between a white American gang, the Jets, led by Riff Tony’s best friend, and a Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks, led by Bernardo Maria’s brother. With this rewrite it pulls more social cords by making it a war of races. And even though there were no Puerto Ricans casted to play the part of any of the sharks or even Maria I think the message still came across.
Robert wise’s help in directing this film was part of the reason it was so successful Works Cited
Baron, Cynthia. “Acting Choices/Filmic Choices: Rethinking Montage and Performance.” Jour nal of Film and Video, vol. 59, no. 2, 2007, pp. 32-40. ProQuest,
Beck, Victoria S., PhD., and Stephanie Boys PhD. “Romeo & Juliet: Star-Crossed Lovers Or Sex Offenders?” Criminal Justice Policy Review, vol. 24, no. 6, 2013, pp. 655. ProQuest,
Roger Ebert, ON S. “Zeffirelli’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Remains the Benchmark.” Denver Post, Sep 17, 2000, pp. K-04. ProQuest,