Films from Lit­er­a­ture ENG 2400

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  • Which Romeo and Juliet do you like/dislike?
  • #69272

    Prof. Masiello
    Participant

    This dis­cus­sion thread is taken from the pdf I emailed to you about work for weeks 9, 10, and 11

    https://​www.​dropbox.​com/​sh/​5ul​lhb1​h17i​2h7s/​AAD9bYJ-​8_​DPZ​Jr92​bhOD​PG5a?​dl=0&​pre​view=Rom​eo+and+Jul​iet+non​disc.​mp4 (65 min­utes)

    “Called Romeo and Juliet nondisk,” this com­pi­la­tion shows var­i­ous in­ter­pre­ta­tions and film ver­sions of this clas­sic play.

    For dis­cus­sion:

    a) Which of the film ver­sions have you al­ready seen?

    b) Which of the ver­sions, based on the clips, do you feel works well or does not work? (the 1936 ver­sion de­serves some at­ten­tion and you will be grate­ful it is not the one we watch.)

    c) Please ex­plain why you an­swered pro or con for item b…

    d) Which of the ver­sions do you feel cap­tures what the play is about?

    Note: West Side Story changes the char­ac­ter names, but it is es­sen­tially the same story.

    The Baz Luhrman/Leo Di­Caprio ver­sion was up­dated to ap­peal to con­tem­po­rary au­di­ences.

    The most re­cent ver­sion, from 2013, adds bits of di­a­log that are not in the play, but are “Shake­spearean” in sound.

    We will watch the best ver­sion, from 1968.

    • This topic was mod­i­fied 4 years, 5 months ago by Prof. Masiello.
    #69348

    Christopher Lobato
    Participant

    a) Which of the film ver­sions have you al­ready seen?
    I have only watched the 1968 and 1998 ver­sions of Romeo and Juliet. How­ever, it has been a few years since I have last seen them.

    b) Which of the ver­sions, based on the clips, do you feel works well or does not work?
    It is a bit dif­fi­cult for me to say which of the films does not work from just the clips shown in the video, but I be­lieve that the ver­sions that worked the best were the 1968 and 1997 ver­sions as well as West Side Story. Con­versely, I think that the 2013 ver­sion and the 1936 ver­sion worked the least. As I pre­vi­ously men­tioned, I do not be­lieve any of them seemed like bad adap­ta­tions, so I’m cu­ri­ous as to why you said we would be grate­ful that we are not watch­ing the 1936 ver­sion.

    c) Please ex­plain why you an­swered pro or con for item b…
    Be­fore de­cid­ing why each of the films works, it is key to first think about the themes and ideas of the play. One of the most in­te­gral parts of the tragedy is its di­a­logue about love. Along with love, other ideas also begin to emerge, such as love and youth, love and fate, and love and so­ci­ety(fam­ily). Along with these, other fac­tors de­cide if the film works or not, such as the pe­riod the films em­u­late and changes made to the orig­i­nal di­a­logue.

    Firstly the 1936 ver­sion works the least be­cause of its de­pic­tion of love and youth. Both Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard are much older than the char­ac­ters they are por­tray­ing. Their in­ter­ac­tions also lack the same play­ful­ness that the di­a­logue in the play de­picts. The film seems like a faith­ful adap­ta­tion, but it feels undis­tin­guished, and it down­plays the fam­ily con­flict. How­ever, this can be be­cause it came out in 1936, and cast­ing younger ac­tors would have been prob­lem­atic.

    Con­versely, the 2013 ver­sion is a much more dra­matic adap­ta­tion that fea­tures many younger-look­ing ac­tors. As a re­sult, the in­ter­ac­tions are much more play­ful and em­pha­size the love and youth as­pects of the play. In turn, it makes the film more cliched be­cause of its dra­mat­ics.

    How­ever, un­like the first two films men­tioned, the 1996 Romeo + Juliet does not share the same set­ting. The film fea­tures a more mod­ern set­ting in­stead of a tra­di­tional Verona set­ting. The film works be­cause it al­lows for greater ap­peal to newer au­di­ences while not chang­ing the di­a­logue. It also al­lows for more cre­ative sce­nar­ios that dif­fer­en­ti­ate from the play. Like the 1936 ver­sion, this film fea­tures younger ac­tors, but it also seems to focus more on the fam­ily con­flict. The film also in­cludes some in­ter­est­ing added ef­fects that cre­ate a su­per­nat­ural feel that ac­cen­tu­ates this idea of fate. For ex­am­ple, the storm and rain that ap­pear at the death of Mer­cu­tio and Ty­balt.

    Sim­i­larly, West Side Story also de­vi­ates in set­ting and has a large focus on the con­flict of love and so­ci­ety. It in­ter­est­ingly retells the story but is not alien­at­ing to the point where it is not ap­par­ent that the plot de­rives from Romeo and Juliet. Like the other films, it has a large focus on the love and re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two pro­tag­o­nists. Over­all, this reimag­ing works and cre­ates a more vi­brant, youth­ful, urban Romeo and Juliet.

    Lastly, the 1968 ver­sion of Romeo and Juliet works. The film is a faith­ful de­pic­tion of the play and at­tempts to cre­ate a con­vinc­ing por­trayal of Verona. The ac­tors who play Romeo and Juliet are also close to the age of the char­ac­ters they are por­tray­ing.

    d) Which of the ver­sions do you feel cap­tures what the play is about?
    Ul­ti­mately, the 1968 Romeo and Juliet best cap­tures what the play is about. The rea­son for this is be­cause it ful­fills all the themes men­tioned above like, love and youth, love and fate, and love, and so­ci­ety(fam­ily). In the first meet­ing scene, the non-diegetic music play­ing es­tab­lishes the tone of and fore­shad­ows the events of the story. The song’s lyrics talk about youth and life being tran­si­tory, as well as the over­pow­er­ing na­ture of love and pas­sion. It also fore­shad­ows the fact that the play is a tragedy and in­serts this idea about fate by im­ply­ing that these star-crossed lovers will even­tu­ally fade away. The con­ver­sa­tion that fol­lows this also elab­o­rates on the fact that the love must be se­cre­tive and sep­a­rate from so­ci­ety with the way Romeo grabs Juliet’s hand first and not face to face in se­cret be­fore she looks him in the eyes. The di­a­logue and the act­ing also make their re­la­tion­ship seem flir­ta­tious and youth­ful, es­pe­cially with the scene of Leonard Whit­ing hang­ing from the tree after his con­ver­sa­tion with Juliet. The film also has a bal­ance of dra­matic and comedic tones, which are major since the play has as­pects of a Shake­spearean ro­man­tic com­edy.

    #69360

    Prof. Masiello
    Participant

    Christo­pher,

    The rea­son I know most of your class would not like the 1936 ver­sion is three-fold:

    1) as you pointed out, the ac­tors are too old for the parts

    2) most younger au­di­ences pre­fer to see color films

    3) the act­ing style used in the 1936 ver­sion is very dated. Pic­ture some­one with the back of her hand against her fore­head to ex­press dis­tress. It does not play well today.

    I am going to men­tion these com­ments for, hope­fully, oth­ers to see and re­spond to:

    The 1996 ver­sion with Leo Di­Caprio is cer­tainly en­er­getic and fun. I do not think the bal­cony scene works with the young cou­ple falling into the pool of water and some­how the Eliz­a­bethan Eng­lish doesn’t sound quite right with Amer­i­can ac­cents.

    What do you think?

    The most re­cent ver­sion lacks ro­man­tic pas­sion (un­like the 1968 ver­sion). Though Hailee Ste­in­feld is nor­mally a very good ac­tress her Juliet’s line read­ings seem rushed and un­emo­tional.

    Did any­one in our class see and like this ver­sion?

    Had we not been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the Covid-19 pan­demic, there would have been a new ver­sion of West Side Story, di­rected by Steven Spiel­berg open­ing this De­cem­ber to see dur­ing our se­mes­ter, but it has been post­poned.

    You men­tioned the music when in our 1968 ver­sion Romeo and Juliet first meet. It is in fact both diegetic be­cause we see the music source, the young singer, and also non-diegetic as you said, since we hear soar­ing or­ches­tral music with no ap­par­ent source, hence non-diegetic.

    Near the end of our se­mes­ter, there will be a very en­joy­able com­pi­la­tion I will post about sound and music.

    #69417

    Virginia Sanchez
    Participant

    a) Which of the film ver­sions have you al­ready seen?
    I’ve only ever seen the 1996 ver­sion of Romeo and Juliet but I don’t be­lieve I even fin­ished the film.

    b) Which of the ver­sions, based on the clips, do you feel works well or does not work? (the 1936 ver­sion de­serves some at­ten­tion and you will be grate­ful it is not the one we watch.)
    In my opin­ion, the 1968 and 1996 films worked well.

    c) Please ex­plain why you an­swered pro or con for item b…
    I chose these film adap­tions in par­tic­u­lar be­cause of how the lines are de­liv­ered mostly. The char­ac­ter’s ex­pres­sions and ges­tures re­ally de­liver the mes­sages within the text. I was able to un­der­stand the dif­fer­ent terms quicker be­cause of these vi­sual clues and so I was able to enjoy them more.

    d) Which of the ver­sions do you feel cap­tures what the play is about?
    Over­all the 1968 ver­sion of Romeo and Juliet was both faith­ful in aes­thet­ics as well as text. It is very chal­leng­ing to be faith­ful to your source ma­te­r­ial with­out mak­ing too many changes, but I be­lieve the 1968 ver­sion was able to cap­ture this with the right amount of com­edy, tragedy, and love within the film.

    Pro­fes­sor Com­ments Re­sponse:

    I don’t feel any par­tic­u­lar way about the pool scene but I do enjoy the Eliz­a­bethan Eng­lish with the Amer­i­can ac­cent, al­though I’ll admit com­i­cal at times. It’s re­ally in­ter­est­ing how that was mixed, prob­a­bly helped view­ers re­late more.

    I have not seen the en­tire re­cent 2013 film but from clips here and there I do agree there is a lack of pas­sion. Com­pared to the story it is rep­re­sent­ing, and its pre­de­ces­sors be­fore, more could have been de­liv­ered.

    #69420

    Prof. Masiello
    Participant

    Vir­ginia,

    Thanks for your com­ments.

    I am going to post a ques­tion soon for fur­ther dis­cus­sion about some changes made from play to film, but I am wait­ing for more stu­dents to com­ment as you did.

    #69427

    ,
    Participant

    a) Which of the film ver­sions have you al­ready seen?
    Just parts of the 2013 ver­sion.

    b) Which of the ver­sions, based on the clips, do you feel works well or does not work? (the 1936 ver­sion de­serves some at­ten­tion and you will be grate­ful it is not the one we watch.)
    The 1968 ver­sion i feel like it works and im able to un­der­stand the text from it. It por­trays the text well.

    c) Please ex­plain why you an­swered pro or con for item b…
    Its col­ored and i do pre­fer col­ored over b&w (the 1936 ver­sion).

    d) Which of the ver­sions do you feel cap­tures what the play is about?
    1968

    #69429

    Jennifer Apuango
    Participant

    a) Which of the film ver­sions have you al­ready seen?
    *I have al­ready seen the 1996 ver­sion only.

    b) Which of the ver­sions, based on the clips, do you feel works well or does not work? (the 1936 ver­sion de­serves some at­ten­tion and you will be grate­ful it is not the one we watch.
    * I feel that the 1968 ver­sion works bet­ter than the oth­ers.

    c) Please ex­plain why you an­swered pro or con for item b…
    * The 1968 ver­sion is bet­ter be­cause it has a more in­no­cent por­trayal and Romeo and Juliet have more ro­mance be­tween each other. It also has sim­i­lar style and it uses Shakesperean lan­guage. Romeo and Juliet kisses are more pas­sion­ate and they look around the same age as the play which in the other ver­sions they look older.

    d) Which of the ver­sions do you feel cap­tures what the play is about?
    * The 1968 ver­sion cap­tures more with the play be­cause is more re­al­is­tic and ac­cu­rate. This ver­sion I could un­der­stand it bet­ter and in­cludes pas­sion, po­etry, vi­o­lence, love, and tragedy just like the play.

    #69448

    Prof. Masiello
    Participant

    Yes, Jen­nifer,

    The ver­sion we are dis­cussing was praised for its choice to use younger ac­tors, Whit­ing was 17 and Hussey was 15 then.

    #69452

    Jabir Alam
    Participant

    a) Which of the film ver­sions have you al­ready seen?
    > I have al­ready seen 1968 ver­sion and 1996 ver­sion

    b) Which of the ver­sions, based on the clips, do you feel works well or does not work? (the 1936 ver­sion de­serves some at­ten­tion and you will be grate­ful it is not the one we watch.

    > I feel like 1968 works bet­ter than 1996 and oth­ers,

    c) Please ex­plain why you an­swered pro or con for item b…

    > in 1996 ver­sion the set­ting was ter­ri­ble con­sid­er­ing it was in mod­ern times, 1968 ver­sion story had so much de­tails and re­al­ism also showed how love has no bound­aries two fam­ily ri­vals be­come lovers

    d) Which of the ver­sions do you feel cap­tures what the play is about
    > 1968 ver­sion cap­tures what the play was about

    #69480

    Prof. Masiello
    Participant

    Jabir,

    I agree with much of what you said, but up­dat­ing a story to mod­ern times is not nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing. I do feel hav­ing Amer­i­can ac­cents speak Eliz­a­bethan Eng­lish sounds odd, but the mul­ti­cul­tural cast­ing is in­ter­est­ing and the big cor­po­ra­tion build­ings being called Mon­tague and Ca­pulet is rather cool.

    Un­for­tu­nately, the 1996 ver­sion has the love story over­whelmed by all the ac­tion-movie scenes.

    #69489

    Anderson Uribe
    Participant

    a) Which of the film ver­sions have you al­ready seen?
    I watched the 1968 film ver­sion.

    b) Which of the ver­sions, based on the clips, do you feel works well or does not work? (the 1936 ver­sion de­serves some at­ten­tion and you will be grate­ful it is not the one we watch.)
    I much pre­fer the 1968 ver­sion.

    c) Please ex­plain why you an­swered pro or con for item b…
    Shake­speare’s writ­ing voice and in­tent is po­etic, lay­ered and de­scrip­tive, al­low­ing for im­ages of what is being said to ap­pear in ones’ mind. It is witty and play­ful. Romeo & Juliet ’68 showed these sub­tleties. For ex­am­ple, the lovers’ first meet­ing. We know that they are in­ter­ested in each other and will come to­gether, an in­evitabil­ity. How­ever, the sub­tlety with which Romeo ap­proaches Juliet and de­liv­ers his di­a­logue by the pil­lar shows that he is care­ful in his aim to lower her guard. Juliet’s aim is to let him ap­proach her, but again, she is also sub­tle. Her words and move­ments show that she is not re­fus­ing, but he needs to pass her test. The scene is drawn out, as the ac­tors de­liver the lines slowly.

    In con­trast, while the lan­guage used in the 1997 ver­sion is the same, the ac­tors’ line de­liv­ery and act­ing are starkly dif­fer­ent. The scene lasts ap­prox­i­mately 40 sec­onds less and fo­cuses much more on their kiss. The scene is not sub­tle. I know their in­evitable lover re­union is done as soon as they start speak­ing with each other. It is all about the end kiss. So much so that the kiss is done in pub­lic, in the view of every­one at the party. Also, the 1997 film bor­ders on satire with its drama­tism, es­pe­cially con­sid­er­ing the first clip, with the guns and the cars and the scream­ing di­a­logue.

    The other ver­sions are not up to my ideals ei­ther. The 1936 film is sim­i­larly un­re­strained as 1997’s ver­sion, as Romeo ap­proaches Juliet non­cha­lantly to dance with her and no one ap­pears to no­tice their ex­is­tence; he al­most kisses her mid-dance. The en­tire scene is even shorter than the oth­ers. The 2013 film, an ex­treme mod­ern Hol­ly­wood style film that locks Romeo and Juliet in a room, I won­der who was sur­prised when they kissed? The di­a­logue is made point­less, as a re­sult. Nev­er­the­less, the ac­tors do slowly go through the mo­tions of whis­per­ing the di­a­logue.

    A West Side Story is a mu­si­cal that keeps the premise of trib­al­ism, but it loses the po­etry and wit of Shake­speare. I pre­fer the lan­guage and in­tent are main­tained.

    d) Which of the ver­sions do you feel cap­tures what the play is about?
    The play is es­sen­tially about how op­pos­ing clans cre­ate the norm of op­po­si­tion, re­gard­less of their his­tor­i­cal rea­sons, with two lovers caught be­tween the clans’ strug­gle for dom­i­nance. Ul­ti­mately, all the films in the pre­sen­ta­tion cap­tured these as­pects.

    #69492

    Prof. Masiello
    Participant

    An­der­son,

    Your de­tailed replies are so in­ter­est­ing and ex­pres­sive.

    Romeo and Juliet is a sta­ple of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and many stu­dents have read it and can iden­tify

    with the youth­ful char­ac­ters. A com­pletely dif­fer­ent film adap­ta­tion I would rec­om­mend to stu­dents who have some cu­rios­ity about

    Shake­speare’s other works is Richard III, a 1995 film which is set in 1930s Eng­land.

    Have you read oth­ers of Shake­speare’s plays and/or seen their film ver­sions?

    #69496

    Anderson Uribe
    Participant

    Re­sponse to No­vem­ber 18, 2020 at 7:13 pm mes­sage

    I did not fail to no­tice that the 1936 film used older ac­tors. How­ever, I do not think that this is the real prob­lem with it… it looked rather bland in the pre­sen­ta­tion. In any case, I did not read or watch any of Shake­speare’s re­lated works until now. In­cred­i­ble, I know.

    #69501

    Prof. Masiello
    Participant

    An­der­son,

    Was your ear­lier ed­u­ca­tion, let’s say from grades 9 through 12 other than in New York?

    My un­der­stand­ing is that stu­dents in that grade range are usu­ally as­signed at least one of the fol­low­ing Shake­spearean plays:

    Romeo and Juliet, Ham­let, and/or Mac­beth.

    Nev­er­the­less, your ap­pre­ci­a­tion for his writ­ing, as ex­pressed in your re­cent post, is duly noted.

    #69536

    Jimcya
    Participant

    This dis­cus­sion thread is taken from the pdf I emailed to you about work for weeks 9, 10, and 11

    https://​www.​dropbox.​com/​sh/​5ul​lhb1​h17i​2h7s/​AAD9bYJ-​8_​DPZ​Jr92​bhOD​PG5a?​dl=0&​pre​view=Rom​eo+and+Jul​iet+non​disc.​mp4 (65 min­utes)

    “Called Romeo and Juliet nondisk,” this com­pi­la­tion shows var­i­ous in­ter­pre­ta­tions and film ver­sions of this clas­sic play.

    For dis­cus­sion:

    a) Which of the film ver­sions have you al­ready seen?
    I’ve only seen the 1996 ver­sion that’s full of ac­tion.

    b) Which of the ver­sions, based on the clips, do you feel works well or does not work? (the 1936 ver­sion de­serves some at­ten­tion and you will be grate­ful it is not the one we watch.)
    The ver­sion of 1968.

    c) Please ex­plain why you an­swered pro or con for item b…
    I feel like it will be a more strik­ing ver­sion of “Romeo and Juliet”, and the spark that the char­ac­ters have can have a greater im­pact.

    d) Which of the ver­sions do you feel cap­tures what the play is about?
    The 1968 ver­sion be­cause it is the most re­al­is­tic ver­sion be­cause of how it is set and be­cause of the cos­tume de­sign.

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