Romeo and Juliet - an Interpretation of Some Movies

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Romeo and Juliet is a Shakespearean tragedy which has captured the attention of tens of directors through the decades. Movie adaptation of the play can be traced as far as 1908, a time when sound wasn’t yet introduced to movies. Romeo and Juliet’s appeal is that it is a story that can happen to anyone, and get be adapted to suit any era due to it being a tragic love story that a lot of people, can relate to in a way or another. This text will attempt to tackle the different ways 4 different directors interpreted one single play, right down to one single scene. The movies are all good adaptations of the play and they do have a great deal in common, like the way the Capulets and Montagues are dressed, this includes the 1996 version because even though the roles are flipped at that scene the clothing schematic still applies only in reverse, the Capulets always seems to be more brightly dressed than the Montagues, and they almost always initiate the fight, and the people seem in favour of the Montagues rather than the Capulets due to that. The movies bring Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in a way that is different, but not more important, than a stage performance. The movies may have similar characteristics , like they all start with the Chorus or they distinguish the Capulets and Montagues through their clothes but at the same time they are fundamentally different. In Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 adaptation of the movie he modernizes the setting of the movie, while keeping the Shakespearean “Language” intact, but he does make certain drastic changes in the play itself. While most Romeo and Juliet movies have a male chorus , who either appears on the screen or doesn’t, Luhrmann chose a female T.V reporter to first say the chorus and where it sounds more like a daily newscast rather than a chorus, which she only recited up to the words “traffic of our stage” the camera then

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