Studying two film versions of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet'.

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We have been studying two film versions of Shakespeare’s  ‘Romeo and Juliet’.

Baz Luhrmann directed the first film we watched. It was set in the 1990’s and the second film version we watched was directed by Franco Zeffirelli this version was produced in the late 60’s, but set in the 1600’s.

For this essay, I will be talking about the two films and comparing them to each other. I will also say which version I found the most interesting and explain why.

One of the most interesting differences was the opening of the films.

Baz Luhrmann’s opening film was my favourite opening between the two versions. He made the newscaster say the words of the prologue by showing the newscaster on the television with the headlines of a newspaper on the top right corner of the screen. As soon as the newscaster finished the prologue, Baz Luhrmann made the images speed up with fast camera shots showing around the city of Verona and the music made the scene look more dramatic plus it made our attention be arrested to the film. The images were showing us the two famous buildings of the city, the Capulets building and the Montague’s buildings. I know which building belongs to, because on the top of the buildings has the owners name in big letters.

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An other thing that I liked about this version was that when we were hearing the Narrator’s voice saying the prologue for the second time, we hear the words that he says being accompanied by the newspaper headlines with the picture of the two families with a given fore names.

Franco Zeffirelli’s opening scene didn’t have that excitement intro compare to Baz Luhrmann. He made his version more original, with the music that was popular in the Tudor times and the Narrator saying the prologue while he shows the audience Verona city in the Tudor times specially the ...

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