Romeo and Julia
Shakespeare wrote his play Romeo and Juliet in 1596. I just learned that there have been at least 30 major motion pictures of the play. I once read that there is a new Romeo and Juliet film every year, but I could not confirm this. In any case, Shakespeare’s genius lies in his ability to find, reshape, and invent stories that resonate with human beings across centuries. My first encounter with Romeo and Juliet in a film was in 1996 when Baz Luhrmann cast young Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio in a modernized version set not in historical Verona, but somewhere in the United States. I remember liking this transposition of the storyline into modern America. I just learned about the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet by the Italian director Franco Zeffirelli because the actress who played Juliet in Zeffirelli’s film (Olivia Hussey) recently passed away.
Her performance was so compelling that she received a major obituary, even though she remained a one-hit-wonder actress and could never reach the acclaim of her 1968 performance. I found the film on Apple TV USA and had a deeply moving streaming experience. I read that Zeffirelli’s innovation was to cast much younger actors (Olivia Hussey was 16 and her Romeo was 17 at the time) and to how both in a nude scene when they wake up from first night together.
I think I had even read Shakespeare’s play in the early 1990s, but over the last few decades, many details of the play and the 1996 film had escaped me. Now that I’m much older, when I see two youngsters falling in love, I perceive it differently than when I was young myself. Shakespeare’s material, combined with the directing and acting in the 1968 film, is so compelling that I give my money-back guarantee for this film. If you don’t like it, write to me, and I will reimburse your streaming costs. I’m confident that I will not have to pay you because the film is spectacularly moving. Whose heart is not touched in the face of two people falling so deeply in love that they are prepared to die for it?