55th Anniversary of the "Romeo and Juliet"
Of course, everyone probably understood that in this case we are not talking about the immortal creation of the great Shakespeare, but about the film adaptation of this creation, carried out by the Italian director Franco Zeffirelli.
The premiere of the film "Romeo and Juliet" can be considered a screening of the picture for members of the British royal family, held on March 4, 1968. On March 5, 1968, the film was shown in cinemas in the UK, and then in other countries. And 4 years later, in March 1972, "Romeo and Juliet" began to be shown in Soviet cinemas. However, with the age limit "Children under 16 are not allowed." However, in the US and the UK the film also had age restrictions: PG. Moreover, this film was the first screen adaptation of Shakespeare's works in history, for which age restrictions were set.
I remember very well how I went to see this film. The fact is that when Franco Zeffirelli's film began to be shown in our city, I was not only 16 years old, not even 15 years old yet. And the guys from our yard, who were a year, two years older than me, watched the film. And they discussed it very violently among themselves. How I envied them: they, who were not interested in anything other than hockey, watched the film. And I, who by that time had already read Shakespeare's tragedy in the original, had not seen the film. I must say that in those days the aunt-controllers zealously observed these age restrictions. So I asked a friend for platform shoes (they were just coming into fashion then) to look taller, and put on glasses (for solidity). Of course, there was a risk that the controllers would ask for a passport. But there was a hope that the crowd of those eager to get to the session would force the ushers to abandon the idea of ​​checking passports. And so it happened.
The movie exceeded all my expectations! Literally everything: from costumes and music to the Nurse and Mercutio! By the way, the actor John McEnery, who played Mercutio, at the time of filming, when he uttered a monologue containing the words "Plague on both your houses!", He himself suffered from pneumonia. Of course, Romeo and Juliet themselves struck my teenage imagination - they were practically the same age as me, and therefore absolutely reliable and convincing. And infinitely beautiful! It is no coincidence that Zeffirelli later admitted that Olivia Hussey (Juliet) was "an unrequited object of his adoration." And - yes - the famous member of the quartet "The Beatles" Paul McCartney later recalled that Zeffirelli offered him the role of Romeo, but Paul refused, citing a lack of acting experience. I don’t know how true these memories are, but, with all my love for The Beatles, I think that 25-year-old McCartney by that time would be completely out of place in the film. If only because he was 8 years older than Leonard Whiting, whose acting experience by that time hardly surpassed that of the famous Beatle.
Against the backdrop of my recollection of teenage rapture sparked by Franco Zeffirelli's film and its main characters, the news came last year that Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting were suing British Home Entertainment for sexually exploiting and distributing nude pictures of them as adolescents, which they claimed caused them emotional distress and damaged their later careers. The actors demanded $500 million in moral compensation. The actors seem to have succumbed to the excitement of the #metoo movement. It looks especially ugly against the background of the fact that back in 2018, when Zeffirelli was alive, Olivia Hussey, in an interview with Fox News, recalled:
“I think because it was done very tastefully... And in Europe, it was very different. In America, it was very taboo. But in Europe a lot of the films had nudity. Nobody really thought much of it. But it was just the fact that I was 16 that got a lot of publicity… The large crew we worked with was whittled down to only the very basic people, a handful of people. It was done later in the day when it wasn’t busy. It was a closed set...And it wasn’t really banned in any country… And we shot it at the very end of the film. So by that time… we’ve all become a big family… It wasn’t that big of a deal. And Leonard wasn’t shy at all! In the middle of shooting, I just completely forgot I didn’t have clothes on.”
But once Zeffirelli, the main witness to the events, died in 2019, and there you are: sexual exploitation. However, this topic is already outside of cinema as an art. This topic is closer to the once popular heading "Their manners." And we will return to the film.
It is said that this tragedy by Shakespeare was filmed more than 40 times. But it was in Zeffirelli's film that the age of the performers of the main roles was as close as possible to the age of Shakespeare's heroes. Not sure about 40 versions, I've only seen 4. But the Zeffirelli version is the best for me. And not only for me. For example, American film critic guru Roger Ebert, who gave the film a maximum of 4 stars, wrote in his 1968 review:
"I believe Franco Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet" is the most exciting film of Shakespeare ever made. Not because it is greater drama than Olivier's "Henry V," because it is not. Nor is it greater cinema than Welles' "Falstaff." But it is greater Shakespeare than either because it has the passion, the sweat, the violence, the poetry, the love and the tragedy in the most immediate terms I can imagine. It is a deeply moving piece of entertainment, and that is possibly what Shakespeare would have preferred."
Since Ebert mentioned Laurence Olivier in his review, it should probably be noted that the great British actor was also involved in the Zeffirelli film. He was so impressed with Zeffirelli's work for the National Theater of Great Britain, of which Olivier was the director at the time, that he agreed to perform the role of the narrator in the film for free and without being credited, and also to voice the role of Signor Montecchi, since the actor Antonio Pierfederici spoke English with very strong Italian accent.
It is known that Ebert sometimes changes his grades after a number of years (see, for example, "The Graduate"). But even after 32 years, during which several more adaptations of the tragedy appeared, in a 2000 review, he wrote:
""Romeo and Juliet" has been filmed many times in many ways;...But the favorite film version is likely to remain, for many years, Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 production." Needless to say, this film is included in his list of"Great Movies".
In 1969, Franco Zeffirelli's film was awarded several prestigious film awards and nominations. First, it won the US Golden Globe Award for Best English Language Foreign Film. Then Franco Zeffirelli himself received the Italian David di Donatello Prize for Best Director. But the decisions of the American and British film academies struck me as somewhat strange. Thus, the film "Romeo and Juliet" received 4 Oscar nominations, but in the most important categories Best Picture and Best Director lost to another British film "Oliver!" and, accordingly, the director of this film, Carol Reed. However, "Romeo and Juliet" found themselves in a more than worthy company of relative "losers": "2001: A Space Odyssey" by Stanley Kubrick, "Battle for Algeria" by Gillo Pontecorvo, "Lion in Winter" by Anthony Harvey.
In the same 1969 Zeffirelli film received 7 nominations for the BAFTA British Film Academy Award, but won only one - for Best Costumes. In the Best Picture category, "Romeo and Juliet" was not even nominated. And in the nomination Best Director the victory was awarded to Mike Nichols for the film "The Graduate".
But ordinary moviegoers highly appreciated this film. With a budget of $850,000 (equivalent to $7.8 million today), the film grossed $38.9 million (equivalent to $331 million today) in its first year. The picture by Franco Zeffirelli won great love in the Soviet Union. Almost 36 million Soviet moviegoers (about 15% of the population) watched it in the first year of its demonstration. And this despite age restrictions. According to the results of a poll by the "Soviet Screen" magazine, the film was recognized as the best foreign film of the Soviet film distribution in 1972.
The modern moviegoer appreciated Franco Zeffirelli's film masterpiece no less highly than the audience half a century ago. 67% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world rated the film from 8 to 10. And 28% rated the film with the highest score - "ten". Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of the film "Romeo and Juliet" by Franco Zeffirelli according to FilmGourmand version was 9.339, which allowed it to take 103rd Rank in the Golden Thousand.
