Romeo and Juliet (1968)

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Movie
German title Romeo and Juliet
Original title Romeo and Juliet
Country of production England , Italy
original language English
Publishing year 1968
length 138 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Franco Zeffirelli
script Franco Brusati
Masolino D'Amico
Franco Zeffirelli
after William Shakespeare
production John Brabourne
Anthony Havelock-Allan
music Nino Rota
camera Pasqualino De Santis
cut Reginald Mills
occupation
synchronization

Romeo and Juliet is a British - Italian literary film adaptation by Franco Zeffirelli from 1968 based on the play of the same name (1596) by William Shakespeare .

action

Verona, 16th century: The wealthy Montague and Capulet families - including their supporters - are in constant quarrel, triggered by mutual provocations and spite. Right at the beginning, Benvolio, nephew of the lord of the Montagues, is fighting with Tybalt, nephew of the lord of the Capulets. There is a public fight and a fight between the two sides. The Prince of Verona is very angry about this and publicly imposes a ban on further fighting under threat of the death penalty. The passionate Romeo Montague did not participate in the riot. He wanders through the landscape - depressed, restless, plagued by lovesickness over the beautiful Rosalind, who turned him away. In the meantime, Count Paris has asked the 14-year-old Julia in the house of the Capulets. To give her the opportunity to get to know Count Paris, the Capulets give a party. Benvolio and Mercutio have fun going to this festival masked, taking their friend Romeo with them to cheer him up. Lord Capulet learns that Montagues are secretly present, but to keep calm he ignores this. During this lavish ball night, Romeo and Juliet see each other for the first time and immediately fall in love. First caresses are exchanged behind a curtain. For Romeo, Rosalind is immediately forgotten. The two find out too late which family the other actually belongs to.

While the friends are going home, Romeo is still secretly in the garden of the Capulets and finally discovers Juliet on the balcony, who raves about him. He confesses his love to her under the balcony. The two decide to get married as soon as possible and in secret. Romeo then turns to Brother Lorenzo, who as a monk looks after the monks' garden with the herbs. Although he is skeptical because Romeo forgot Rosalind so quickly, he agrees in the hope of ending the family feud by marrying the children. While Tybalt challenges Romeo from the house of the Capulets to a duel, Mercutio scoffs at Juliet's wet nurse and confidante, who rushes to the church. Here she learns from Romeo that the secret wedding with Juliet is to take place in an hour in Brother Lorenzo's monk cell. Because Julia is allowed to go there with her parents' permission to go to confession. This is how the wedding takes place. Then Julia goes back home.

Tybalt, on the other hand, finds Romeo, but he no longer wants to fight him because he is now related to him (without Tybalt knowing this). Mercutio does not understand this, fights with Tybalt and dies. Beside himself with anger, Romeo pulls his sword and kills Tybalt in revenge. Romeo flees in the tumult of the population. The Prince of Verona, whose relative, Mercutio himself, died as a result of a duel-addicted provocateur, can only pronounce Romeo's banishment from Verona: Romeo has to disappear from Verona immediately if he is threatened with the death penalty. Completely desperate, Romeo again thinks about suicide, but after the monk gives reassuring encouragement, he decides to spend the night with Juliet. At dawn, Romeo flees to Mantua.

But in the Capulet household, Count Paris has in the meantime obtained Lord Capulet's consent to marry Juliet, and although Juliet is desperately reluctant, her father orders the marriage within three days. The nurse advises her to forget Romeo and take Paris, which brings Juliet's contempt. Julia turns to brother Lorenzo in desperation and threatens suicide to avoid the forced marriage. Instead of uncovering the facts, the monk gives her a means that can put her into a seemingly dead sleep. In the meantime, Romeo is to be informed with the aim of freeing her from the family vault if she wakes up there after the burial.

On the night before the wedding with Count Paris, Julia drinks the remedy and the next morning there is a great cry in the Capulet house. Brother Mark, sent to Romeo in Mantua, is too late to deliver the news. In the meantime, Romeo has already learned of Juliet's death, obtained poison and made his way to Verona to die in Juliet's crypt and to be united with her in death. He breaks open the crypt where Julia is now buried, drinks the poison and dies. Shortly afterwards, Juliet wakes up, sees the dead Romeo lying next to her, takes his dagger and stabs himself.

Father Lorenzo, who is afraid of evil and who hurries to the crypt, is too late. He escapes when the guards rush up. In the final scene, the two young dead are buried in front of the shaken prince, the people mourn and the two heads of the family, now without their own heirs, make peace in the face of the high personal losses.

background

Changes to the template

Like most Shakespeare films, Romeo and Juliet is not completely textual. The text has also been significantly shortened in the “popular” scenes, such as the balcony scene. The film remains largely true to the plot; the most significant change is likely that in the final act there is no battle between Romeo and Paris at Juliet's tomb.

Production history

Director Franco Zeffirelli had already directed a theater performance of Romeo and Juliet at the Old Vic in 1960 . In 1967 he made the Shakespeare film The Taming of the Shrew with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the leading roles. During the making of this film, Zeffirelli got the idea to film a second Shakespeare play. Initially, Romeo and Juliet was planned as a television adaptation for the BBC , until Paramount Pictures went into production and the project developed into a feature film. The budget was initially very limited at $ 800,000 for a historical film. Despite cost-cutting measures on the film set, Paramount's studio boss Charles Bludhorn had to be asked to increase the film budget to $ 1.5 million during filming.

The Palazzo Piccolomini served as the backdrop for the house of the Capulets

Since setting up complex sets in the Cinecittà film studios in Rome would have been too expensive, many of the scenes had to be shot outside of Cinecittà. To revive Renaissance Italy , Zeffirelli shot in the cities of Artena (the balcony scene), Tuscania (interior scenes of the church) and Gubbio and Pienza (the street and fencing scenes). The Palazzo Piccolomini in Pienza, built from 1459 on the orders of Pope Pius II , served as the backdrop for the house of the Capulets. Zeffirelli also shot with authentic costumes created by Danilo Donati . In retrospect, shooting outside of the film studios was a stroke of luck and gave the film the "look and feel of robust Renaissance liveliness instead of pale romance," wrote Turner Classic Movies about the film.

Hundreds of teenage actors were interviewed for the lead roles. The age of the main actors - Leonard Whiting was 17 years old when filming, Olivia Hussey 15 years old - corresponds roughly to the age of Romeo and Juliet from Shakespeare's original. The previous film adaptations - for example the 1936 adaptation by George Cukor - had previously mainly relied on older actors. Zeffirelli received special permission to show the bare breasts of Olivia Hussey, who was then underage, but Hussey was not allowed to see the premiere in London because the film was not approved for young people because of this scene. The nude scene caused some protests from the church, in some countries it was cut out of the film. Zeffirelli defended the scene in 1999 in an interview that the film only shows Romeo “in the first and only love scene with the girl he married. It was a monument to chastity and the beauty of physical love. I can't understand why anyone should refuse. "

The narrator of the English version is Laurence Olivier , that of the Italian Vittorio Gassman . In the German version, Werner Peters took on this task. Laurence Olivier's involvement in the film happened by chance, as he was shooting the film In the Fisherman's Shoes in Italy . Famous Shakespeare actor Olivier stopped by while filming and knew Zeffirelli from his time at the Royal National Theater . He asked if there was anything he could do, whereupon Zeffirelli made him the narrator. Olivier also acted as voice actor for the role of Lord Capulet in the English version, as his Italian actor Antonio Pierfederici could only speak broken English. Olivier waived payment for his collaboration.

Romeo and Juliet became a worldwide hit, grossing $ 39 million in the US alone, and was the most commercially successful Shakespeare film to date. The film was often associated with the hippie movement because of the time it was made. Likewise, a contemporary documentary "The Teen-Age Lovers of Verona" repeats the parallels between history and "todays love generation", that of the youth of 1968. Zeffirelli was also able to win some of the actors for his project Jesus of Nazareth nine years later : Olivia Hussey, Michael York, Roy Holder, Keith Skinner and Laurence Olivier.

Film music

The film music of the Italian composer Nino Rota also achieved great fame . In a version arranged by Henry Mancini , the Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet (also known as: A Time for Us ) reached # 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks . The film music was also released internationally on records because of its popularity . In the following decades Rota's film music was covered by Luciano Pavarotti , André Rieu , Johnny Mathis and Andy Williams, among others . In Lana Del Rey's song Old Money from her 2014 released album Ultraviolence is a sampling of works by Rota composition.

In the film, the song What is a Youth is performed by the Italian pop singer Bruno Filippini , who appears in the role of the singer Leonardo, during the festival in the House of Capulets . While Filippini can also be heard in the Italian version of the film, he was dubbed in the English and German version of the film by Glen Weston . Was written What is a Youth of Eugene Walter , of the lyrics in part from other plays of Shakespeare, especially Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice , took over.

synchronization

The German dubbed version was created in 1968 by Berliner Synchron GmbH , directed by Dietmar Behnke, based on a dialogue book by Ruth Leschin.

role actor German Dubbing voice
Romeo Leonard Whiting Lutz Mackensy
Julia Olivia Hussey Uschi Wolff
Mercutio John McEnery Wolfgang Draeger
Father Lorenzo Milo O'Shea Martin Hirthe
The prince Robert Stephens Rolf Schult
Tybalt Michael York Christian Brückner
Benvolio Bruce Robinson Randolf Kronberg
Narrator (voice only) Laurence Olivier Werner Peters

Awards

criticism

This film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet is often considered perhaps the most compelling among film critics. At Rotten Tomatoes , 33 of the 34 reviews are positive, giving the film a positive rating of 97%. The American film critic Roger Ebert rated the film with four stars in his review of October 15, 1968: “(...) I believe that Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet is the most exciting Shakespeare film ever made. Not because it's a bigger drama than Olivier's Henry V , because it's not. It's no bigger cinema than Welles ' Falstaff , either . But it's bigger Shakespeare than either of them because it has the love, the sweat, the violence, the poetry, the love and the tragedy in the most straightforward terms I can imagine. It's a deeply moving piece of entertainment, and that is perhaps what Shakespeare would have preferred. ”Ebert continued to praise the actors and the camerawork of De Santis.

The Lexicon of International Films wrote: “Shakespeare's stage work in a film version that interprets the love drama and its tragic embedding in the old family feud in a powerful and modern way and fans out the scenery into gorgeous visual compositions. A noteworthy attempt by the Italian theater and opera specialist Zeffirelli. ”Apart from a small caveat, the Protestant film observer also came to a positive verdict:“ Interesting Shakespeare film by the Italian theater director Zeffirelli, aesthetically quite attractive, but in that Attempt to play the renaissance tragedy realistically in a film did not succeed seamlessly. Recommended for ages 14 and up. "

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Romeo and Juliet at Turner Classic Movies
  2. ^ Romeo and Juliet's Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting reunite , British Council, 2016
  3. ^ Romeo and Juliet at Turner Classic Movies
  4. ^ Romeo and Juliet at Turner Classic Movies
  5. ^ Romeo and Juliet at Roger Ebert.com
  6. ↑ Biography of Olivia Hussey at the Internet Movie Database
  7. ↑ Interview with Franco Zeffirelli from 1968
  8. ^ Romeo and Juliet at Turner Classic Movies
  9. ^ Trivia for Romeo and Juliet at the Internet Movie Database
  10. ^ Romeo and Juliet at Greatest Films
  11. ↑ Shakespeare and Music: Afterlives and Borrowings , by Julie Sanders, on Google Books
  12. ^ Making of "Romeo and Juliet" (1968). Accessed January 5, 2020 (German).
  13. ↑ The Teen-Age Lovers of Verona. Retrieved January 5, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Romeo and Juliet in the German synchronous file
  15. ↑ cf. Critical consensus at Rotten Tomatoes
  16. ^ Romeo and Juliet (1968) with Roger Ebert
  17. ^ Romeo and Juliet. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  18. ↑ Evangelischer Presseverband München, Review No. 500/1968.