Romeo and Juliet (1936)

Let's be realistic.

A Masterpiece!

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

With a huge production for the time and being extremely faithful to the source material, there is little to distinguish this from a stage play and the actors don't help in that matter either. From the actors being too old for the roles, there are a lot of factors that make this very dated.

For years, I put off watching this version of Shakespeare's classic love story, knowing that all the main players were about thirty years too old for their roles. Finally, when the film came on late on night, I decided to take a look, because I do admire the work of so many of the players.Provided you can put aside the problems of the ages of the actors, the result is a very pleasant surprise. The biggest surprise for me was the performance of Norma Shearer - I've always liked her work, but considered her rather lightweight for Shakespeare. Not so - she delivered her lines with a great feel for the style and pace, and was as delightful and open a Juliet as one could wish. Her age became irrelevant; this was a young girl new to love, completely swept off her feet and ready to surrender all - for the first time.Leslie Howard was also comfortable with the Shakespearean dialogue, if slightly lacking the boyish passion we rightly expect to see. He was more the slightly older suitor, taken by surprise with the fresh appeal of his Juliet, but ready to cast aside previous attachments to pursue and win her. His lovely voice delivered the lines with ease and fluency.John Barrymore's Mercutio was much more the ageing playboy than the dashing young blade, but his sure touch with the dialogue showed clearly why he was considered the preeminent Shakespearean actor of his day in America. His delivery of the "Queen Mab" speech was a delight. His body was way too old, but his spirit lacked nothing.Flora Robson came near to stealing most of her scenes, as she so often did, and Basil Rathbone was fully at home in the role of Tybalt; fine performances from these two, as we would expect from their backgrounds.It was, to my mind, rather over-produced, with the actors in danger of being lost in the expansive sets, but remembering that had these actors been performing on stage, we wouldn't bat an eyelid at their ages, they provide us with an engrossing experience and deliver a play that even the experts couldn't fault.

This film has to be seen for what it does well. Zeffirelli puts his young actors (Hussey and Whiting) against an opulent renaissance background. And that treatment -- along with Michael York's sneering Tybalt -- is why one would watch that film. Castellani dwarfs his actors (Harvey and Shentall) with the architecture of Verona, but Shentall refuses to be crushed and delivers an endearing performance. Luhrmann places his actors (de Caprio and Danes) in the vivid swirl of Mexico City, a place of fabulous wealth and deepest poverty. The lovers race to their doom in a film that captures the rhythms of the script, for all of the ineptitude of the actors. Cukor's black-and-white photography is superb. Look, for example, at Romeo's approach past a reflecting pool to Juliet's balcony. It is wonderfully realized. So what if Juliet's balcony looks like a crow's nest on a battleship? This is a film to be enjoyed for the wordless sequences that the camera creates for us.

I found the stars too old for their roles. I suppose this started the trend of over agers playing teenagers (remember Grease? or more to the point, west side story?) The only person I found to look close to the age Shakespeare had in mind was Reginald Denny. The acting was OK. I loved Barrymore's Mercutio. Someone asked why he had not played Romeo given his penchant for playing the Lover. Barrymore replied "for two reasons dear boy...Juliet, and Mercutio". Barrymore was correct in that Juliet is the stronger of the two leads, and Mercutio of course is the most colorful of the supporting players. Basil Rathbone plays himself naturally, a calculating villain of course. Norma Shearer gives the strength to Juliet that Leslie Howard Lacks in Romeo.Barrymore was by the time of this movie considered to be washed up in Hollywood. He gave one more creditable performance in 1939 in "the great man votes", and one more comdeic performance in "midnight" after Romeo and Juliet. His role in this film is the standout performance. For the ladies, my nod goes to Edna Mae Oliver, the starchy character actress as Juliet's nurse.the scenery is too gaudy even for Shakespeare's standards. The costumes, however are a delight. This movie, filmed before Irving Thalberg's death was released after he died.