Product: Romeo and Juliet [Region 2] (1968)
Rating: 5.0
Brush Up Your Shakespeare
Okay, kids, this is it. This is how it's done. This is how you take a timeless story and bring it into the modern world for all to love again.Franco Zeffirelli made several Shakespeare films, and all are excellent--but this is the best. The idea of using actual teens to play teens seemed revolutionary in 1968, but now it just seems visionary. Okay, they made a few cuts in the text, and Juliet's two big monologues are missing. Granted. But this film has probably brought The Bard more new, young fans than any other modern production of his work, stage or screen. And that's saying something. The 1936 Hollywood version of R&J; has its charms, and Leo and Claire were lovely in 1996, but this is the standard by which the others are measured. Watch it. Study it. Celebrate it.