Page 59 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

48 I Shakespeare in the Movies

dwarfed under immense arches, presages the famed Errol Flynn-Basil
Rathbone duel in Michael Curtiz's Adventures of Robin Hood two
years later. Juliet's death is more believable here than in other pro-
ductions, Cukor introducing the device and her determination early
on. When Romeo is banished, she discovers his forgotten dagger; we
view, from her point of view, an extreme close-up implying the
object's imminent importance. Juliet holds it close, then utters her
line: "If all else fail, myself have power to die." Normally, this
sounds like a naive girl's romantic boast; since Shearer says those
words while clutching the dagger, it makes perfect sense for her to
employ it at the end.
As the Prince speaks his final words of admonishment during the
burial that ends the feud, he transforms into the Chorus, reciting
Shakespeare's moral ("All are punished!") as actors dissolve into the
figures of the previously glimpsed painting; we end where we began,
reminded this is art first, entertainment second. Too arty, in fact,
for the public; coupled with the failure of Warner's Midsummer
Night's Dream a year earlier, the major studios backed off the Bard
for more than a decade.

Such Sweet Sorrow
Romeo and Juliet

Verona Productions, 1954; Renato Castellani

The next significant cinematic Romeo and Juliet conveyed the state
of the art, and drastically altered the industry, during a decidedly
different decade. In the early 1950s assembly-line filmmaking—real-
ity re-created on studio back lots—diminished. Postwar audiences,
particularly returning veterans, had seen too much of the world to
continue accepting Hollywood fabrications of it. Following a wave of
popular imported films, the studios began shooting on location.
Movies had to be made in color, or people would stay home and
watch black-and-white entertainment on television, which, with the
moviegoing audience growing ever younger, increasingly kept older
Americans at home.
James Dean's on-screen image, first in East of Eden and then Rebel
Without a Cause, reflected the youth audience's own rebellious atti-
tudes toward parental figures who couldn't comprehend teenage ide-
alism. At the time of his death, Dean was scheduled to appear in