Rome And Juliet (Comparison Of the two films)

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English Coursework : Rome And Juliet (Comparison Of the two films)

The prologue is the introduction, which gives an overview of the play. It tells us what happens at the end of the play, in this case in 'Romeo and Juliet' it is told in the introduction, for example the lines, 'a pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life', 'doth with their death bury their parents strife'. These two lines say that Romeo and Juliet both deep in love with each other, die at the end of the play, the reason being that their parents hated each other. It also sets the scene of 'Fair Verona' and it explains the contents of the play, 'Two households', and 'break to new mutiny'. The prologue is said by the chorus. This means it is an idea of a group of people taken from ancient Greek tradition. The prologue does not introduce the audience to the characters in the play; it just talks briefly about the events within the play.

It is self consciously dramatic. It emphasises its purpose in telling the story, 'Is now the two hour's traffic of our stage.' It directly tells the audience to pay attention, 'The which if you with patient ears attend, what here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend,' and the play will develop from what the prologue has been revealing.

In Franco Zefirelli's production of 'Romeo and Juliet', the prologue is very brief and short. The film starts off with the details, the opening credits. The font to the credits is in white and in a quite gothic style of writing making it fit in with the traditional theme. While the details are slowly appearing on the screen, around the screen there is a thin border of orange geometric shapes on a yellow background. As the border is so bright and colourful, it is able to immediately catch the audience's eyes and therefore grabs their attention. The border suggests a very sixties styles. You would probably expect a more formal, dark edged kind of border. A soft and slow melody played on a harpsichord plays quietly in the background. The effect that Zefirelli tries to create here is to create a nice calm beginning to the play.

In shot one, you can see the camera panning over the city of 'Fair Verona' and slightly out of focus. The light is blue and hazy, gradually brightening up as the camera pans, suggesting that it is dawn. The colour of the light in the sky shining over the city, creates a dreamy and peaceful effect, and adds to the beauty of the city that is being shown. You could only just make out the tops of tall buildings and churches at first, but as it gradually gets lighter, the buildings and other features become more into focus. The rooftops of houses, church spires and a river are seen clearly. You are able to feel the quietness of the city in the early morning, which again gives the effect of the city being very calm and peaceful. The camera pans round the whole city, and then moves up towards the sun and stop with the sun being directly in the middle of the screen shot. The sun suggests the hot foreign climate of a hot foreign country, such as Italy. Shakespeare's name appears when the camera has stop panning and focused on the sun. All of this equals one continuos shot. The panning is slow, and the brightening of the day is slow, creating a slow pace to the shot. It gives me the impression of a slow climax to the prologue, getting more and more intense as it goes along, and stopping at the sun gives me the impression that it represents the end, with an either tragic end or a very happy end. I think that it is trying to relate to the whole play itself, with the gradual climax with an intense ending. Throughout shot one, the speaker slowly recites the prologue in a poetic style. He speaks slowly going with the steady flow of the slow motion of the panning of the camera, so that it would not effect the background's creation of peace. The speaker of the prologue is a man whose voice is gentle, soothing and rhythmic as he echoes the prologue. He still speaks when going into the second shot.

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Shot two is of a medieval courtyard. In front of the courtyard there is the city wall with battlements made of stone and brick, which gives the impression of the setting being in the medieval times. The camera stops moving and shows the shot of the courtyard while the speaker finishes reciting the prologue. As he completes his speech of the prologue, the camera moves slightly round to the left, which shows that where the camera is next to the city wall, it is also one of the ends of a busy marketplace. The sun's golden bright morning light ...

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