I watched Franco Zefferilli's 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet in my high school AP English class. Instead of a contemporary remake of Romeo and Juliet with modern conventions, Franco used original script and realistic, traditional settings to give a modern video recording of Shakespeare’s famous play of two lovers with hated families. While the dialogue did seem to sometimes be drawn out at odd moments and there was a lack of realistic expression from Juliet, the movie was overall still enjoyable. Most of the problems did settle on Juliet’s performance. This may have been an interpretation of Franco’s that sought to portray Juliet as sober and obsessed with an ideal as opposed to actually being in a deep emotional love. Romeo on the other hand seemed to portray his rash sudden love for Juliet quite well. He sneaks into Juliet’s family’s’ party and provides an amusing scene that really set the show up for a decent performance from the beginning. Unfortunately at the end of the movie, Juliet once again shows a very unrealistic emotional response to Romeo’s death that ends up simply bringing the movie down. Her reaction is just numb like she is just reading lines as opposed to actually experiencing the death of her lover at her own disguise. Overall, the performance was decent due to some poor acting, but it’s realistic setting and adherence to Shakespeare’s words means it has some value.
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