Line #26 Film/RomeoAndJuliet1968


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/900x900bb.jpg]]
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3	''Romeo and Juliet'' is a 1968 film directed by Creator/FrancoZeffirelli, based on the play ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet'' by Creator/WilliamShakespeare.
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5	It stars Creator/LeonardWhiting as Romeo and Creator/OliviaHussey as Juliet, and was the first major production to cast actual teenagers in the roles.
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7	The supporting cast included Creator/MichaelYork as Tybalt. Creator/LaurenceOlivier giving the opening and closing narration, and also dubbed the voice of the Italian actor who played Lord Montague. Bruce Robinson, who plays Benvolio, went on to a long career as a screenwriter and director of movies like ''Film/WithnailAndI''. Music/NinoRota composed the score.
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9	The film gained a measure of infamy at the time for featuring teen-aged Romeo and Juliet partially naked during a scene (the urban legend that Hussey was refused entry into the film because she wasn't old enough is almost certainly false).
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11	It was nominated for four UsefulNotes/{{Academy Award}}s, winning for cinematography and costume design. Compare the 1936 version, ''Film/{{Romeo and Juliet\|1936}}'', and the 1996 version, ''Film/WilliamShakespearesRomeoAndJuliet''.
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14	!!This film contains examples of:
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16	* AccentAdaptation: Despite being set (and filmed in) Italy, the majority of characters speak with English RP accents - the Capulets all speaking much posher than the Montagues. The Nurse as a servant is given a light cockney accent, while Friar Lawrence is given an Irish one.
17	* ActuallyPrettyFunny:
18	** When the Nurse is listing through things Juliet did when she was three, and makes inappropriate jokes, Lady Capulet is scandalized. But Juliet just giggles.
19	** When Mercutio mocks the Nurse, and spins her around, the other men joined in on the teasing, and both Romeo, and the Nurse's servant Peter, just stood by and laughed along. When the Nurse later asked why neither Romeo nor Peter did anything to help her, both men responded with just this.
20	* AdaptationalHeroism: A mild case with Tybalt. Tybalt is often played as a dead-eyed killer out for Montague blood, as he is in both the 1936 and 1996 films. But in this movie he's more of a boisterous youth. He is laughing and having fun during the duel with Mercutio, and he has a MyGodWhatHaveIDone look of horror on his face when he sees blood on his sword and realizes that he has stabbed Mercutio for real.
21	* AdaptationDyeJob: According to the text of Arthur Brooke’s poem, Shakespeare’s source, Juliet is golden-haired. Here she has dark hair.
22	* AdaptationExpansion: The film adds extra scenes not in the text.
23	** At the masquerade, a Capulet singer called Leonardo sings a song called "What is a Youth", which segues into the lovers' first lines together.
24	** Before he leaves Verona, Romeo is seen bidding goodbye to Benvolio.
25	** Juliet's first funeral is shown, and Balthasar witnesses the burial.
26	** The ending adds in a funeral scene for Romeo and Juliet, showing the reactions of characters like Lady Capulet, Benvolio, the Nurse and Balthasar.
27	* AdaptationExplanationExtrication:
28	** Rosaline is not mentioned in Benvolio and Romeo's first scene, and most of the dialogue relating to her is cut. This makes it look like the Montagues decide to crash the masquerade ball for no particular reason. Rosaline does appear onscreen; Romeo is briefly taken aback to see her (actress Paola Tedesco, uncredited) at the Capulet party, only to pay her no more heed when he sees Juliet behind her.
29	** The scene where Romeo goes to the apothecary and procures some poison is cut from the movie. Instead, he simply produces it out of nowhere and drinks it in the Capulet tomb.
30	** At the end, the Prince laments that he has lost "a brace of kinsmen." A "brace" is a pair, but the Prince has seemingly lost only one kinsman, Mercutio, leaving the audience to wonder who the other kinsman was. This is because the adaptation has cut the death of the Prince's other kinsman, Count Paris, but neglected to change the Prince's speech accordingly.
31	* AdaptationalJerkass:
32	** In the play, Mercutio merely mocks the Nurse. Here, he grabs onto her dress and spins her around, mocking her as she falls. Benvolio qualifies too, as he joined in on the teasing. Technically all of the guys in that scene, including Romeo qualify as they all laughed and played along with it.
33	** In the play, Tybalt returns to the scene after killing Mercutio, and Romeo kills him in a duel. Here, Romeo chases Tybalt down in almost a berserker rage.
34	* AdaptationalNiceGuy: Tybalt is more of a bioisterous fun-loving youth and has a look of horror on his face when he realizes he stabbed Mercutio, suggesting that he never intended to hurt anyone. In the play, he stabs Mercutio with a cheap shot.
35	* AffectionateGestureToTheHead: The Nurse comforts Benvolio this way in the end scene.
36	* AgeLift:
37	** Juliet is subtly aged up to be played by a sixteen-year-old actress (though dialogue about her being nearly fourteen was kept).
38	** The Nurse if compared to other adaptations, which cast older grandmotherly women. Pat Heywood was only 36, though that's actually most likely the correct age for the character in the original text.
39	* AllPartOfTheShow: Everyone thinks at first that Mercutio, the local SadClown, is joking around after being injured by Tybalt; it is only when they check on him they realize that his injuries are fatal.
40	* BalconyWooingScene: You can't make a ''Romeo and Juliet'' movie without one. This particular staging of the famous balcony scene uses the setting so that Juliet can bend over the balcony in a low-cut dress and dangle her cleavage for the camera. This, in combination with LettingHerHairDown (in previous scenes Juliet wore prim dresses and kept her hair in a braid), adds sexual tension to the scene where Romeo woos her and they proclaim their love.
41	* BlahBlahBlah: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ0kOi6qqHY A scene starts]] with Mercutio saying "Blah blah blah" instead of engaging with the conversation Benvolio's trying to have with him.
42	* BlondeBrunetteRedhead: Male example. Mercutio (blond), Benvolio (brunet) and Romeo as light brown substituting redhead.
43	* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: The Capulets wear red and the Montagues blue (or sometimes green), and the Prince's family wear somber, dark browns. That is, until the final scene of Romeo and Juliet's funeral, when the newly reconciled Capulets and Montagues both wear [[WidowsWeeds black]] instead.
44	* ColorCodedPatrician: The Prince wears deep purple, setting him apart from the blue Montagues and red Capulets.
45	* ComeBackToBedHoney: Staging Act III, Scene V as Romeo and Juliet lolling in bed together makes the scene into this. Juliet's "Wilt thou be gone?...Stay yet" becomes her telling Romeo to come back to bed for more sex.
46	* CostumePorn: The Renaissance costumes are absolutely breathtaking and absolutely period-accurate, with hundreds of yards of elaborately pleated cotton velvet on the women and raunchy, colourful tights and codpieces on the men. It deservedly won an Oscar for Best Costume Design.
47	* CryingWolf: Mercutio is a melodramatic jokester, so when he gets into a mock fight with Tybalt and screamed that he is dying, while making witticisms about his injury, all of his friends laugh at him. He is, in fact, dying.
48	* DeadGuyOnDisplay: Both the Capulets and Montagues bring their freshly dead relations (namely, Tybalt and Mercutio) and lay them out in the square, in the scene where the two families are both demanding vengeance from the Prince.
49	* DecompositeCharacter: The Prince doesn't say the "for never was a story of more woe" line in the end, which is given to the narrator.
50	* DiabolusExMachina: Straight from the play. The final tragedy only plays out because the Friar by random chance gets stuck in a plague-stricken town that has been put under quarantine, and as a result can't get his crucial message to Romeo.
51	* DoesntKnowTheirOwnChild: After she sends the Nurse out so she can talk to Juliet about an {{arranged marriage}}, Lady Capulet realizes that she doesn't really know how to talk to her and calls the Nurse back.
52	* EstablishingCharacterMoment: When Romeo is first seen, he's walking back to town from the forest...and he's smelling a wildflower that he picked. He's established as a sensitive sort.
53	* ForDoomTheBellTolls: A tolling bell ushers in the dead lovers' bodies in the final scene.
54	** Early in the film, when Romeo has his "for my mind misgives" speech in which he feels that something is going to go wrong that night and lead to "some vile forfeit of untimely death", a bell tolls ominously. Then he goes into the party where he meets Juliet.
55	* GagHaircut: At one point during his duel with Mercutio, Tybalt cuts a chunk of his hair with a sword and draws laughter from the onlookers.
56	* GenderedInsult: After Romeo is sobbing over being exiled from Verona and then grabs a dagger to kill himself, Friar Lawrence slaps him down, rebuking him for "womanish" tears, saying he needs to act like the man he is.
57	* GratuitousLaboratoryFlasks: Friar Lawrence has a desk covered in quite a few interesting-looking (and impractical) retorts and bottles, shown prominently during the scene where he is giving Juliet the sleeping potion. The shots of Juliet from Lawrence's P.O.V. make a point of showing her surrounded on all sides by the Italian Renaissance-era style glassware. Interestingly one of the items is a very anachronistic modern Erlenmeyer flask filled with blue liquid.
58	* HeadbuttOfLove: Romeo and...Mercutio, actually, after Romeo snaps Mercutio out of the babbling nonsense which is his "Queen Mab" rant, by grabbing him and saying "Peace, Mercutio, peace...thou talkst of nothing."
59	** They do this again when a dying Mercutio puts his arm around Romeo's neck and asks why he came between Mercutio and Tybalt.
60	* HollywoodOld: A justified example. The Nurse is played by Pat Heywood at 36...which is actually the age she most likely is in the text.
61	* HotBlooded: Most of the main characters. This film was famous for averting the [[invoked]]DawsonCasting that was near-universal in earlier ''Romeo and Juliet'' adaptations and actually casting young people in the main roles: 17-year-old Olivia Hussey, 18-year-old Leonard Whiting, 25-year-old John [=McEnery=] (Mercutio), 26-year-old Michael York. This choice makes a big difference onscreen, making the whole story more natural, a play about impetuous HotBlooded youth getting carried away with hormones and clan rivalries.
62	* HotterAndSexier: This film cast two attractive young actors and then took advantage of the end of UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode to include brief nudity from Juliet and rather more prolonged nudity from Romeo, and also restaged their last scene together to show them in bed, when the play's stage directions only say "at the window". As a result it's HotterAndSexier than any stage or screen adaptation of ''Romeo and Juliet'' that preceded it.
63	* ImpairmentShot: A camera shot from Mercutio's POV blurring and then coming back into focus is used to show that he is dying.
64	* ImprovisedWeapon: Mercutio and Tybalt briefly fight with farm tools.
65	* InelegantBlubbering: Both Romeo and Juliet cry this way.
66	* InsertCameo: During the SwordFight, when Mercutio throws a sword at Tybalt's feet, Mercutio's shadow is actually Franco Zeffirelli's shadow standing in for him because [=John McEnery=] was sick that day (according to Creator/MichaelYork's autobiography).
67	* IrishPriest: Friar Lawrence is given an Irish accent, the only character with such an accent in the film. He's actually played by Irish actor Milo O'Shea.
68	* LettingHerHairDown: Juliet is introduced with her hair braided and wears it so for the masquerade. The first time we see it down is for the balcony scene.
69	* MaidAndMaiden: Juliet is the maiden and her nurse is the old maid who is her caretaker and confidante.
70	* ManlyTears: Benvolio in an added scene where he says goodbye to Romeo after the latter is banished.
71	* MatchCut: From Lord Capulet embracing Juliet as she pretends to agree to the wedding with Paris, to Lady Capulet doing the same.
72	* ModestyBedsheet: Juliet in the bedroom scene, although she does give the audience a brief flash of her nipples when she gets up to change.
73	* MortalWoundReveal: Mercutio's death is played as this, although it's Romeo who reveals the mortal wound after Mercutio is dead.
74	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Tybalt looks shocked when he actually kills Mercutio.
75	* NouveauRiche: This is how the Capulets (Juliet's family) are depicted, reflected in their stylistic choices. The Capulets and their retainers are dressed in loud, bright colors, while the Montagues (the older and more respected family of Romeo) favor more conservative clothing hues.
76	* PragmaticAdaptation: The film removes large chunks of dialogue from key scenes to better get across the passion and intensity of the moment (more dialogue works better in theatre rather than film) - including most of the lines after the two lovers die. Paris's death in the tomb was also cut to better serve the running time. Juliet is also played by a sixteen-year-old actress and portrayed as older, rather than thirteen as in the text.[[note]]The tale the play was inspired by actually had Juliet at this age, and Shakespeare made her younger supposedly to give AnAesop about the evils of child marriage. As that was pretty much a thing of the past by 1968, there was also no need to have a thirteen-year-old Juliet.[[/note]]
77	* SadClown:
78	** Mercutio. He's the jokester among Romeo's friends, cracking jokes that amuse them and is constantly sarcastic. At heart though he's troubled for unspecified reasons, and briefly shows it during his speech on Queen Mab, covering this with humor. When he's mortally wounded, he angrily denounces both Montagues and Capulets.
79	** The Nurse becomes this by the final scene. We see her ashen-faced and trying to comfort Benvolio as she accompanies the funeral procession inside.
80	* SignatureHeadgear: Lady Capulet is never seen without a fancy headdress on.
81	* SilenceIsGolden: The ending has very little in the way of dialogue compared to the original text's ending.
82	* SparedByTheAdaptation:
83	** Paris' death is omitted. It was filmed but cut from the final piece.
84	** This adaptation leaves out Lady Montague's DeathByDespair and lets her mourn Romeo's death with her husband in the final scene.
85	** If you go by the Quarto, Benvolio dies off-screen and is normally absent from the play's final scenes. The film shows him mourning Romeo and Juliet in the ending.
86	* WhatBeautifulEyes: The film makes a point of underscoring this on behalf of Olivia Hussey's Juliet. When she and Romeo first meet, we get a ''mind blowing'' close-up shot of Hussey's bright grey eyes.
87	* WidowsWeeds:
88	** Juliet's mother wears a black veil during Juliet's staged funeral.
89	** In the final scene, all the Capulets and Montagues alike wear black during the real joint funeral of the two lovers.

Context Film / RomeoAndJuliet1968