Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet: A Review

The main question of the review was "How does this adaptation capture the mood and atmosphere of the original script?" This adaptation of the play was kept fairly close to the original script, it was set in the same time period as the book but the mood and atmosphere seemed to be different. The book had a certain mood to it; it was humorous at some points yet serious and dramatic in others. The movie seemed to have the same mood throughout the whole movie: Dull. The actors that were chosen seemed to be flat and had very little emotion. Juliet, Olivia Hussey, seemed as though she never really had been in love and had one of the worst death scenes ever. Throughout the whole scene where she was in the tomb she seemed to be lacking any real feeling and was more just there and dying than anything. This was different compared to some of her other scenes such as the one after Tybalts death, it was as though it had been overacted, in the book Juliet was sad about Tybalts death but not devastated. The actor that played Romeo, Leonard Whiting, fit the part well but at times it was as if he was really 10 instead of his actual age because of the way he portrayed his joy. When compared to Baz Luhrman's adaptation it made a lot more sense even though i only saw the beginning of his version it had a more comedic mood and was portrayed as more unserious than Zeffirelli's version. I don't really think either movie did a great job of conveying the mood and atmosphere of the original play but if I had to choose one to watch it would definitely be Zeffirelli's version because it did a much better job of telling the story.