Page 56 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

Star-Crossed Lovers I 45

lot. Makeup people labored to help Shearer, who had matured into a
handsome woman of thirty-two, appear fifteen, which was ulti-
mately an impossible undertaking. The shooting schedule stretched
to six months so that perfectionists would be satisfied with every
detail. The total cost escalated to more than $2 million, the highest
ever for an M-G-M film at that time. Finally, shooting and editing
were over; everyone held their collective breath, waiting to see
whether critics and the public would turn thumbs up or down.
Time wryly noted that despite all the lavish and special treat-
ment, Romeo and Juliet "remains what it has always been: The best
version ever written of Hollywood's favorite theme, Boy Meets Girl."
Few reviews were completely negative. The middlebrow press lav-
ished praise, insisting that Romeo and Juliet raised the status of the
movie medium to a higher plateau, something filmmakers had been
trying to achieve since leaving the sleazy nickelodeon sideshow era
behind. Critics in highbrow journals were more restrained; Otis Fer-
guson of the New Republic spoke for many when he noted: "The
picture is done well, but seems little more than that—and may no
more be regarded as a nuisance on the precincts of Shakespeare than
hailed as Hollywood's admission ticket to the pasturelands of art."
By self-consciously working in "awe" of Will, Thalberg was the
first (many would follow) to be criticized for "framing an old pic-
ture rather than executing a new one"; deferring to Shakespeare,
allowing the movie medium to service him, rather than actually
devising a movie from the Bard's work. In fact, though, Cukor
employed his gifts as visual storyteller more fully than has been
admitted; moreover, the film takes more liberties with the original,
for better or worse, than anyone has acknowledged.
Credits are presented as unfolding scrolls, visually announcing a
class production. That quality is enhanced when a painting provides
our first on-screen image; as the camera closes in, this painting
comes to life, the prologue speaking fatalistic lines about "star-
crossed lovers" to Renaissance listeners. We enter high art, Holly-
wood fashion, and through it, Shakespeare's play. This is not,
M-G-M implied, Romeo and Juliet readjusted for the contemporary
common man; if the general public attends, they are expected to rise
to the occasion. If the term "culture for the masses" hadn't already
existed, it would have had to be created.
No wonder, then, that Cukor reverses Shakespeare's opening
approach. In the original, servants wander into Verona's square,
becoming embroiled in a long-standing argument between their mas-