Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Few plays have been adapted for the screen as many times as William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and yet Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 version remains, for many people, the definitive filmed take on the story. The basic outline is well known to the point of being cultural shorthand: two young people from rival families in Verona fall in love, marry in secret, and are destroyed by the hatred surrounding them. What Zeffirelli's production offered that many earlier screen versions had not was a sense of genuine youth. Previous Hollywood adaptations had cast actors well into their twenties or thirties in the lead roles, whereas here the central couple were played by performers who were themselves teenagers at the time of filming. It was a choice that proved both controversial and widely praised, and it gave the film an emotional texture that set it apart from its predecessors.

Zeffirelli was an Italian director with deep roots in opera and theatre, and his background in large-scale, visually rich productions is evident throughout. The film was a co-production between Paramount Pictures, DDL Cinematografica, and BHE Films, shot on location in Italy rather than on a studio backlot, which lends it a warmth and physicality that feel genuinely earned. The score was composed by Nino Rota, the Italian composer perhaps best known for his long collaboration with Federico Fellini, and his music for this film became one of the most recognisable pieces of cinema writing from that entire decade. The film sits alongside a number of other Italian productions covered on this site, including Call Me by Your Name (2017) and Cemetery Man (1994), as an example of Italian filmmaking that reaches well beyond its national borders in terms of ambition and audience. For a sense of what else the late 1960s was producing in world cinema, it is also worth glancing at reviews of films like Persona (1966) and Viy (1967), which show just how varied and restless that particular moment in film history was.

In the lead roles, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey were relative unknowns when cast, and that unfamiliarity works in the film's favour. Supporting them is a cast that includes Michael York as the volatile Tybalt, John McEnery as a mercurial Mercutio, and Milo O'Shea as Friar Laurence, all bringing considerably more stage experience to their roles. The film runs to 138 minutes, a runtime that allows Zeffirelli to let scenes breathe and the location photography to register properly, though it is not a runtime that passes without the occasional lull. Polished but unremarkable in its fidelity to the original text (some passages are cut or rearranged, as is standard practice), it wears its respectfulness for the source material openly, without much interest in doing anything radical with it.

I first saw Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet as a GCSE student, part of the whole Shakespeare grind that came with studying the play, writing essays, memorising quotes. But unlike most set texts forced upon us, this film actually made the words come alive. Zeffirelli’s version is lush, passionate, and beautifully mounted, filmed on location in Italy, with sun-drenched courtyards, authentic costumes, and a sense of period that feels far more grounded than most Shakespeare adaptations. It doesn’t feel like actors reciting lines on a stage; it feels like real young lovers caught in a world too violent for their dreams. Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey were teenagers when they played the roles, which helps. Their performances aren’t the most technically refined, but they’ve got a raw, wide-eyed sincerity that makes the romance believable. You feel the giddy excitement of first love, the desperation of being torn apart by family hate. The balcony scene, in particular, is tender and iconic. And Nino Rota’s score is haunting, swelling with a kind of tragic beauty that lingers long after. It’s not perfect (some of the supporting performances veer into theatrical excess, and the pacing drags slightly in the middle) but as a faithful, emotionally sincere adaptation, it works. It helped me understand the play in a way reading alone never could, and clearly made an impression, I did get that A*. It’s not flashy or radical, but it’s honest, heartfelt, and respectful of the material.

I suspect a lot of people who first encountered this film the same way I did, as part of a school curriculum, might be tempted to dismiss it as a classroom memory rather than a film worth returning to as an adult. But rewatching it, I find the affection I have for it is genuine rather than nostalgic. The location work alone repays a second viewing, and Rota's score is the kind of thing that creeps back into your head days later. It is, as I said, not a film that sets out to surprise you or reinvent anything. What it does, it does with care and warmth, and sometimes that is more than enough. Shakespeare, as it turns out, does not always need rescuing.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1968  | Watched: 2025-08-21

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Italy: Nightmare City (1980) · Cemetery Man (1994) · One Way or Another (1975) · Chicken for Linda! (2023)
More from the 1960s: Viy (1967) · Persona (1966) · Carnival of Souls (1962) · Daisies (1966)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
More romance: The Eagle (1925) · The Last Picture Show (1971) · The General (1926) · The Docks of New York (1928)