Page 64 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

Star-Crossed Lovers / 53

the mad blood stirring." As Anthony West noted in Vogue, Zeffirelli
"draws from (this phrase) the vision of an almost visible heat press-
ing down on the dry, close, nerve-wrackingly airless little town,
turning the last screw of the lethal boredom which will make men
seek to kill each other to relieve their exasperation at having noth-
ing better to do." The following duel is, then, "all viewed through a
faint haze of dust and summer heat," as Mollie Panter-Downes
described it in the New Yorker.
Like Castellani, Zeffirelli realized that contemporary Verona did
not offer enough possibilities, therefore, he filmed individual shots in
diverse areas, from Tuscany to Umbria. The scenes he staged involv-
ing street gangs were played (in spite of accurate period costumes) as
modern kids with bad attitudes. They were also highly influenced by
West Side Story (1961), which abandoned Shakespeare's language but
retained his vision for a Romeo and Juliet redux set on New York's
mean streets. In addition to a suggestion of modernity through
movement, Zeffirelli also opted for a unique interpretation of the
Tybalt-Mercutio duel, logically deriving from contemporary gangs.
Rather than play the scene as Shakespeare intended, where the
youths meet with bloody conflict in mind, Zeffirelli chose to show
bravado gone bad. His kids bait each other, half-kiddingly, believing
things will remain under control; they use their swords, like switch-
blades, to tease.
Tybalt and Mercutio here become, according to Robert Hatch of
the Nation, "a couple of neighborhood warlords, vaunting their
courage with grandstand high jinks, trying for a victory by humilia-
tion, and giving no strong impression of a taste to kill." Each tries to
outmacho the other without actually drawing blood. When Mercutio
is wounded even as Romeo tries to halt the dangerous wisecrack-
ing, Tybalt appears stunned to realize he's inflicted a lethal wound,
skulking off guiltily. This increases sympathy for Tybalt, who is now
less a minor Machiavellian and more a victim of circumstances.
When Mercutio calls out curses on Capulet and Montague alike
("a plague on both your houses!"), another twist emerges. Instead of
mourning Mercutio even before he falls, his friends believe this to be
one more joke. Mercutio has been portrayed as a modern nihilist
rather than a Renaissance sophisticate. So his fellows laugh at the
wise guy's bad puns ("tomorrow, you shall find me a grave man"),
gasping in horror upon realizing that, like the boy who cried wolf,
Mercutio was serious. Although this may not be what Shakespeare
envisioned, it does not negate the author's vision.