After taking a break for a month to digest all of those ‘Best of 2024’ lists, the IndieWeb Movie Club is back, with a variant. Mark kindly hosts once again, and he proposes a multiversal version of the club in which each participant must choose their favourite version of a story that’s been adapted repeatedly. I suppose that Romeo and Juliet has been selected because February is Saint Valentine’s month: what better period to immerse ourselves in the most tragic of love stories? It works both for the hopeless romantics, and for the sceptics who are happy not to be expected to sacrifice themselves because they have lost someone they literally met two days earlier.

This new approach adds a bit of friction to the participation: should I opt for a version that is likely not to be chosen by other people? Or just follow my heart (to be more in line with the theme) and just go for one I want to see?
I would have really liked to revisit Baz Luhrmann’s Leonardo & Claire version from 1996, which I last watched… in 1996, when Di Caprio was still considered just a heart-throb and Danes had not gone through eight seasons of Homeland. How would it feel to see these actors today?

But then I decided that, as the (only?) Italian person in the club, I should instead honour my heritage and look back further to the past, to Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 version. That choice would require fighting a bit my instinct (maestro Zeffirelli has always been quite a controversial, outspoken conservative figure in Italian public life and politics), but I could try and appreciate the film on its own merits.
Furthermore, having actually lived for seven years in fair Verona, I would have enjoyed an additional nostalgic thrill by watching the play set in its natural environment.

As a side note: the city of Verona, in north-east Italy, has really capitalised on Shakespeare’s play; thousands of tourists flock every year to its streets to admire ‘Giulietta’s balcony’ (it sounds naughtier than it is) or even ‘Giulietta’s Tomb’. Does it matter that Romeo and Juliet are fictional characters? Apparently, not in the slightest.
Verona is a beautiful city, brimming with things to see, including a Roman amphitheatre that is older and better preserved than the Colosseo. It doesn’t need a fake love story to attract visitors. But still…

Anyway, I rented the film, I started watching it, and immediately struggled not only to understand Shakespeare’s dialogues (that’s my fault), but also to recognise Verona at all!
That’s because Franco Zeffirelli, being from Florence, decided to shoot the film in Tuscany, and in a Cinecittà soundstage reproducing… Tuscany, again.
Furthermore, there are almost no Italian actors on camera: I knew the leads were British, but the same applies to the huge majority of the cast. I suppose that having native English speakers helped with reciting the verses of the Bard of Avon.

Frankly, I was a bit disappointed.
But I decided nevertheless to try watching the film with impartial eyes (and subtitles). The problem with the adaptation of such a well-known story is that, unless there’s something really inventive in the way it’s represented, it can be underwhelming or even boring.
For what concerns the inventiveness of the mise-en-scene, there’s not a lot to say: Zeffirelli directed the most faithful adaptation of the play one can think of (well, aside from the detail of choosing the wrong location), even deciding to cast two actors almost as young as the two characters are.
This is a bit icky, considering that he then decided to film them in an unnecessary (non-explicit) nude scene.
Juliet, as a character, is not even 14 years old when her father arranges for her to get immediately married. Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting were slightly older (16 and 17), but they later claimed that the experience left them traumatised, and even filed an unsuccessful lawsuit in 2023.
So, this is a fact that we might need to consciously set aside (or not) in evaluating this film.
It’s not at all, in my opinion, a prurient sequence, but it’s also not necessary or justified. On the other hand, there is no poster for this film that doesn’t overtly sexualise the two teenagers.

In any case, the young cast is the secret weapon of this film, making it much more entertaining and engaging than I anticipated: the acting by Hussey and Whiting is, understandably, far from perfect, but their flaws are more than compensated by the enthusiasm and the energy that they put in their roles.
Their performance is supported by the strong presence of the slightly older John McEnery (an incredibly annoying Mercutio) and a magnetic Michael York (Tybalt), who had his debut the year before with another Shakespeare adaptation by Zeffirelli (The Taming of the Shrew).
Milo O’Shea and Pat Heywood, as the adult aids to the two lovers, also make an invaluable contribution to keep the film fun and energetic.

For most of the film, the players’ expressivity takes the lead over a direction that is still very theatrical, where the characters take the spotlight one at a time.
It’s only in the final act, when tragedy is about to strike and our protagonists are forced into inactivity, that the impetus stops and the film starts to feel slow and heavy, and the last scenes seem to dilate endlessly.
Or at least, long enough to make me hope that there could be a different ending for these two adorable starry-eyed star-crossed lovers.