Franco Zeffirelli has died at 96
Franco Zeffirelli died Saturday at the venerable age of 96. But to me, he was and always will be the director of the 1968 film “Romeo and Juliet,” a movie that breathed extraordinary life into Shakespeare. The sweep, color, costumes, music, and pageantry were wonderfully matched—and even bested—by the youthful energy and passion of its astoundingly gorgeous and age-appropriate leads, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting.
Zeffirelli accomplished a great deal more in his life—including a stint fighting with partisans during WWII. But if he never did another thing but “Romeo and Juliet”, that achievement still would have been more than enough to have made him a great director.
I wrote about the film previously, here. An excerpt:
…[W]hen I saw the Zeffirelli film version of “Romeo and Juliet,” I marveled at the [meeting] scene as it was acted out with suitable hand gestures (oh, so that’s the way it works!) by the achingly-young Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting. If you’ve never seen that film, please take a look. Yes, it was roundly criticized for leaving at least half the play on the cutting-room floor and changing a few of the more archaic words here and there. And for including nakedness (as I recall, a rear shot of Romeo during the post-wedding rendezvous in Juliet’s bedroom). And for casting unknown actors who were so young they lacked the requisite Shakespearean gravitas.
But for me, the film made the play come alive. You believed they loved each other. You believed their desperation. And in the death scenes, you could not help but cry at the waste of these two beautiful young lives.
Here’s their meeting scene:
And here they are, close to fifty years later, talking about the film and the director:
RIP, Franco Zeffirelli. And thanks.
His movie got me to pay serious attention to Shakespeare.
“The sun for sorrow will not show his head.” As fine an expression of grief as I know.
One thing I liked about him, aside from the movie, is that he did not like the term “Gay.” He said he was a homosexual and the term Gay was inappropriate. I agree. That was a perfectly good word. I am annoyed that it has lost its meaning,.
That movie became the basis for my love of Shakespeare and shortly thereafter, the theater, that never ended.
I was thrilled (a few months after seeing the movie), when my aunt & uncle asked a if I’d like to go to Ashland with them as they had tickets for As You Like It (in the Elizabethan theater).
I was touched by the film. I laughed (loud and often) during the play.
The film, and that first live play, instilled a love for the theater in general, and Shakespeare in particular, that reading hadn’t quite yet been able to accomplish.
I was, hmm, seventeen.
(I returned to Ashland many times over the years.)
…thanks neo. This post brought all that back from the mists.
I may be just an old fuddy-duddy, but it doesn’t seem right to me to have filmed Olivia Hussey in the nude when she was just 15 years old. Or to have given her the nickname of Boobs O’Mina, as Zefferelli did.
I quick scan of his career suggests he was a huge opera fan as well.
Not just a fan of opera but a director of opera, and one with a great deal of self-regard:
He has two long running productions at The Metropolitan Opera – La Boheme and Turandot.
Mike K on June 17, 2019 at 4:27 pm said:
One thing I liked about him, aside from the movie, is that he did not like the term “Gay.” He said he was a homosexual and the term Gay was inappropriate. I agree. That was a perfectly good word. I am annoyed that it has lost its meaning.
* * *
Actually, I am beyond annoyed, and I wish Zeffirelli’s view had won out.
When I read to my children’s classes in school, some of the classics, I had to edit the language on the fly because of the misappropriation of the word.
We saw “Romeo and Juliet” in high school; all the English classes (language arts, nowadays) gathered in the auditorium (we actually saw several classic films when I was there; probably doesn’t happen now). Absolutely loved the movie, for the same reasons Neo elucidates.
My mother, a junior high English teacher, was BFF with one of the HS teachers, and she found out that her friend had watched the movie five or six times on her own. When Mom inquired about that, seeing as they both knew the story inside out, her friend replied, “But I keep hoping it will come out different!”
Ann:
It was a very quick moment not of total nudity, but of showing her breasts. I agree that she was too young; today I think it would absolutely not be allowed. Of course, we also saw Whiting’s butt. Also probably quite inappropriate. But at the time (and I was relatively young myself) I don’t remember being offended when I saw it. It was also the late 60s, when there was quite a bit of stage nudity and nudity among the young. “Hair” featured quite a bit of nudity, and it was produced in 1968 too. The times were aggressively anti-prudery, and youth led the way. I’m sure some people looked at the movie for the literal “tits and ass” moment, but the accompanying dialogue was so beautiful, the situation so tragic, their love so apparent, and the music so beautiful, that I think the nudity is quite secondary. Nowadays I suppose it would be considered child pornography.
I was thinking mostly of the effect it had on the very young Olivia Hussey herself. In an interview she and Leonard Whiting had with Rex Reed in 1968, there was this:
And this with Whiting is not as icky, but shows he was not all in on the nudity either:
Even as a callow youth of 20, I remember being very impressed with the movie, how perfect the casting of the age appropriate actors and how suitably their beauty fit the story.
So impressed with the music was I that I went out and bought the record album, which I may still have.
Yet I haven’t watched it since that first viewing in the movie theater. Nor have I listened to that album in years.
As my turntable and records are in storage, I searched and found it on Tidal and have placed it in favorites.
Watching the clip from an adult perspective, I couldn’t help but think how far we’ve fallen artistically. Of course, it’s not that artists of today are incapable of matching Zeffirelli’s artistry, it’s that they lack the sensibility to appreciate it.
That was a great year in movies. R&J and Lion in Winter. Throw in Man For All Seasons in 1966, and it was a great era for historical movies.
When I saw the movie, I felt for the first time that somebody had captured what the play was all about.
Ann — you have to remember that throughout history (and in a lot of places today) marriage at 14-16 was perfectly normal, and a young woman at 18 was considered old for marriage. Maybe a nude scene at 15 was gratuitous, but Zeffrelli was showing us that being lovers at that age was not unusual.
Richard Saunders:
I want to mention—although I’m pretty sure you already know this—that at the point of the nude scene in the movie, Romeo and Juliet are actually husband and wife. This is their wedding night we’re seeing.
I agree with Ann that the actor and actress probably felt at least somewhat uncomfortable, and that the scene probably was wrong for them (and today it almost certainly would not and could not and even should not be done). However, for the audience, it was really quite sensitively done and had some artistic validity in portraying the passion of youth.
On the nudity scene: did I mention our High School teachers showed us this film, at school, and several of them good church-going folks.
They may not have known about it beforehand, of course (no internet IMdB or Rotten Tomatoes), but should have.
Frankly, I didn’t even remember it until reading this post, and I don’t think it traumatized me for life, and I don’t even remember the kids making jokes about it.
Maybe they had an expurgated version for schools?
AesopFan:
I believe they did have an expurgated version for schools.
I saw it in a movie theater, and the nude scene was quite memorable.