I put this on my list because I wanted to watch a definitive and faithful adaptation of the play. I’m no expert on Shakespeare but this version does seem plenty authentic to me down to casting leads who are closer in age to the characters as originally intended and having the men wear ridiculous looking tights. Romeo and Juliet hasn’t been considered anything close to an admirable love story for a while now but watching this really drove it home for me what a terrible example the couple are. Shakespeare’s writing still shines even though the plot is dumb and it’s very satisfying to recognize how the lines here are reused just about everywhere.

The feud between the Montague and the Capulet clans in the city of Verona frequently escalate to brawls and infuriates the Prince. He warns them to keep the peace but the impetuous youths of both families don’t pay him much mind. Romeo of the Montagues is depressed when he first appears and is challenged to attend a masked ball hosted by the Capulets to cheer himself up by his best friend Mercutio. There Romeo meets Juliet of the Capulets who has just come of age and is being prepared by her family to be married. Naturally the two immediately fall in love with each other. Later Romeo stumbles into her private garden and thus famously woos her under her balcony, ending with them pledging themselves to each other. The next day, with the assistance of Juliet’s nurse who thinks this is wonderfully romantic, the two are secretly wed by Friar Laurence. The priest thinks that this might help reconcile the two families. But then Romeo kills Juliet’s cousin Tybalt as revenge for the death of Mercutio and is forced into exile. When Juliet’s parents arrange for her to be married to a suitor, Laurence comes up with a ruse for her to escape.

Of course, everyone already knows the story of Romeo and Juliet but there are so many adaptations and reinterpretations that I thought it valuable to watch something very close to the original as conceived by Shakespeare. This turned out rather well as I caught so many details that I’d previously missed such as the fact that Romeo is probably already lovesick when he first appears and how Friar Laurence is really the villain of the story. He secretly marries the couple knowing full well how much trouble that would cause and his plan of getting Juliet is insane given that all that is really required is to smuggle her out of her family’s house. This film version even has him simply flee in terror from the tomb, making him a cowardly and irresponsible figure. I understand however that in the original play, he confesses to the Prince of Verona his part in the tragedy. Then there’s Mercutio whose most famous line is ‘a plague on both of your houses’. Yet he is the one who keeps provoking the Capulets and actively instigates a duel with Tybalt. In effect, he is an asshole who makes trouble for the fun of it yet curses both houses when his actions backfire on himself.

The best part of this film is that it depicts Romeo and Juliet as who they really are: horny teenagers motivated mainly by mutual lust. Director Franco Zeffirelli perfectly nails the unrestrained passion they have for each other that we all remember from our own teenage years and emphasizes the physicality of it. They can’t keep their hands off each other, shower each other with kisses and say goodbye only to return moments later. Both of them are effectively born of noble families, so they insist on getting married before having sex. But you can certainly understand just why they’re in such a hurry to get married. This makes Friar Laurence’s actions even more irresponsible, as he is the adult and surely knows better. It also makes it very difficult to see it as any kind of idealized romantic story. Even without the feud between the two families, we in the modern era have a far better conception of what makes relationships work and there is no way that these two could ever have been a happy couple once they’d gotten past the initial rush of passion and sex.

It’s not fair to judge Romeo and Juliet through modern eyes of course. The very concept of romantic love as we know it today did not exist then and this was one of the touchstones of culture that helped bring it about. Still too many people even today think of it as being genuinely romantic and that’s something we should educate students against. Anyway this film was an excellent way of getting to know the original play without actually having to read it. Watching actors actually perform the lines and convey additional meaning through body language works better too as the text that Shakespeare wrote isn’t the easiest for us to interpret. Zeffirelli  apparently made a career out of similar adaptations but none of them seems as notable as this one.