Compare and contrast two film adaptations of Act 1 Scene 5 of "Romeo and Juliet".

Authors Avatar

Maryam Marmar S10        English Media Coursework        Ms.Bache

Compare and contrast two film adaptations of Act 1 Scene 5 of “Romeo and Juliet”

The two film adaptations I am going to analyse in this essay are the film productions by Baz Luhrmann and Franco Zeffirelli.

The two film productions have a many contrasts but few similarities. To begin with the length of each of the scenes differs, the Luhrmann is 9minutes and 30 seconds long, but the Zeffirelli is nearly twice as long as this its approximately 15minutes and 19 seconds. The Luhrmann is obviously very fast paced and explains why the scene is considerably shorter than the Zeffirelli. Some of the script from the original has also been cut from the Luhrmann which is another reason for why it is shorter than the Zeffirelli.

In the Luhrmann the setting for the party scene starts off with very bright and lurid colours. Romeo enters the party with his friends and has taken drugs. We know that Romeo is under the influence of drugs because he says: “thy drugs are quick”. The room is spinning and faces are leering at him. There is intercutting between Romeo and Mercutio, may possibly have been done to build up the tension . Myself as a viewer is on tenterhooks as they wait and watch the scene escalate to a climax. The method of tension build up used here may have been introduced as a means to demonstrate how one action in one place can affect another in a different place. When Romeo takes the drugs you feel a sense of moral corruption. The drugs factor adds to the modernism of this adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. When Romeo takes the drugs Mercutio growls and this just adds to the atmosphere of chaos and everything be so wild.

Join now!

The beginning of the party when Romeo takes the drugs is very fast paced and frenetic, it has an element of craze. Luhrmann needs to calm the scene down as it is too hyped up. The scene reaches its climax when Mercutio starts singing “young hearts run free”. The mood, tone and pace instantly change from one extreme to another. All these changes occur when Romeo is in the bathroom and submerges his head into water. It muffles out all the sounds from outside but not completely, you can still hear the song “young hearts run free” being sung ...

This is a preview of the whole essay