Compare how Zeffirelli and Luhrman direct the ending of Romeo and Juliet.

The first 200 words of this essay...

Compare how Zeffirelli and Luhrman direct the ending of Romeo and Juliet.

William Shakespeare's great tragedy Romeo and Juliet was written around 1595. For hundreds of years it was an incredibly popular theatrical performance, staged in thousands of theatres across world. However, in the last century improvements in technology have meant that the popularity of theatre has fallen dramatically as a result of the success of cinema. A world of possibilities was created with the breakthrough of cinema; no longer was the setting confined to one stage and the creativity of the set designers, people could be taken around the world and back whilst sitting in their seats. Endless different techniques could be used to provoke emotions in the audience with the variation of shot angles and distances, not to mention the quality of sounds and music and the incredible special effects that could be achieved as technology progressed ever further. It was inevitable that Shakespeare's enduring, classic yet tragic love story of "star-crossed lovers" Romeo and Juliet would one day make it up onto the big screen.

In fact there have been many attempts to recreate the play as a film. Franco Zeffirelli and Baz Luhrman