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Comparing Zeffirelli's Romeo And Juliet

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The timeless romance of Romeo and Juliet has been known and read by people of every age group and time period across the globe. The tragedy of this play teaches us lessons about love and the irrational decisions of teenagers. The original play written by Shakespeare was remade into several film versions that portray similar themes and plots. In 1961, Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise directed a modern day musical called “West Side Story” that showed a different interpretation of Shakespeare’s original play. Later, Franco Zeffirelli created a film version of Romeo and Juliet in 1968 that followed very closely to the original play version of Romeo and Juliet. The differences and similarities of these two film versions of Romeo and Juliet impact …show more content…

First, the way the directors set the location during the fight, portrays the meaning and mood of the fight. In Zeffirelli's film, the location is set in a market in Verona and the character’s remain in the market throughout most of the fight. In Robbins and Wise’s film, the location is set in different alleyways and street corners in New York. The director also uses the technique of camera shots to affect the meaning of the fight scene. In Zeffirelli's film, the camera doesn’t show angles of the background and focuses on the violence of the fight. However in Robbins and Wise’s film, the camera shows mostly long shots and focuses on the movement of characters and doesn’t depict violence. The way that both locations are set in a public place show that both gangs are only worried about the people in the other gang and aren’t worried about bystanders. The way the director focuses on violence in the 1968 film contrasts with the way the directors of the 1961 film focus on the characters movement. This affects the mood because one film seems more gory and violent while the other is calm. The use of one location holding brutality in the 1968 version, show how messy the fight is between the two rivalries. Whereas in Robbins and Wise’s film, the use of various locations and the focus on the characters instead of the fight, show how civil the fight

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