Luhrmann’s opening is quite different. He has a 20th Century Fox logo at the very beginning which is different to Zeffirelli’s because they were made by different companies. He also doesn’t have slow romantic music in the background. Instead there is a television screen showing the company names which changes to a black, female newsreader who reads the prologue. This shows the audience that this movie is more modern because televisions weren’t around in Shakespeare’s time. Also black females didn’t get very good jobs in Shakespeare’s time.
In Zeffirelli’s film it is a male voice reading the prologue. He has a slow deep voice which sounds soft and romantic, adding to the effect. He says it slowly with music playing in the background. As the man is speaking, the background changes from black like night to a shot of the rising sun like a sunset which is considered to be romantic. It then shows the writer’s name, William Shakespeare, and the title of the movie. It then shows shots of buildings that look like part of a castle but were most likely normal houses in Shakespeare’s time. As the voice over stops the music fades and it goes into a panning shot showing a crowd of people dressed in clothes from Shakespeare’s time. This all combines to show the audience that the movie is set in olden times when Shakespeare wrote the play.
However, Luhrmann’s prologue lasts longer than Zeffirelli’s. The news reporter reads the prologue as if it was a news story then there is a quick zoom shot that seems to go through the television and out into a shot going through a city which ends with a close up of a statue. Lines of the prologue flash up in between shots of members of both families. With the shot of the family members are their character’s name and the name of the actor. There are a lot of zoom shots at this point of newspaper headlines and the streets where the characters are. He has made it seem like an action movie because of the quick paced music in the background and the quick cuts between shots make it seem really fast and action packed. It also looks like it is set in America because there are sky scrapers in the city. The two tallest towers, which are the same, represent the two families and that they have the same amount of power in the city. The music stops and it cuts to a shot of some of the characters and starts the story.
The beginning of these two films are similar because they both have the same prologue, same characters and both show the names of the companies who made the film at the beginning. However, they are different because Zeffirelli has made the prologue seem romantic and Luhrmann has made it more exiting to grab the audience’s attention by making shots flash up then go away really quickly.
In my opinion, Zeffirelli’s version would attract woman and older people to watch it. Luhrmann’s version, however, will mostly attract males and the younger generation because it is more modern. Looking at these two prologues, the one that mostly appealed to me was Luhrmann’s version. This is because it is faster and seems more action packed which is the type of movie I prefer.
