Blog #5

  The Romeo and Juliet film I watched was the 1976 TV series version. It was directed by Joan Kemp-Welch, who' s a British director and actress.(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0125480/) The film is 3 hours and 6 minutes long, Joan Kemp-Welch decided to keep all of the original lines from the play, everything were designed to show the real scenes of the original storyline.
  The scenarios takes place mostly in the Medieval style manors, different kinds of buildings and streets. We can tell that Joan Kemp-Welch really attempts to imitate the Medieval British atmosphere: at the beginning of the play, two men of the Capulet family showed up in a market-like place. Women were selling fruits while a silversmith was sharpening a knife. Of course, those scenes are still existing nowadays, but the way they dressed were pretty different from us. The women were in red or white mantillas, and carrying baskets around. The Capulet men were wearing the same costume and acting rudely, one of them pointed the sword at the other and they both threatened a random person on the street. I noticed a slight difference from the original play, they weren't carrying any small shields while the original play says, "Enter Sampson and Gregory, with swords and bucklers". Maybe it's inconvenient to carry them. Next, the men of Montague entered. They were in total different costumes, and carrying weapons. I love the scene when the Capulet men bit their thumbs and had a conversation with the Montague, they express their contempt emotions through the rising tone. It made me laugh when they keep repeating the word "sir" to deride the other. With the enter of Tybelt and Benvolio, the street fight began. Although there weren't many special effect for the film, comparing to all the Hollywood films nowadays, the actors did a great job on the fighting. There were plenty of details showing how the fight between two families damages everything around them: the street became messy; fruits felling on the ground; and Tybelt even slashed an innocent woman on the street. The violence were really out of control, I think that's a fantastic adaptation to the original play. Another detail to mention, the prince was played by an old British actor, that actually shocked me a lot. My first impression to the term "prince" is a handsome, decent young man. But later, I understand the importance of the prince being an old man. As I said above, the street was messy and the fight went unstoppable, until the old prince showed up. He had the pride and gained respect from the people immediately. In my opinion, the mediation wouldn't work that well if the prince is just a young man like those fighters.
  Like most of the other versions of Romeo and Juliet. The two young lovers meets in a garden at night, Juliet standing upstairs. But the special part of this version is that Romeo climbed and hung on the vine for so long. In most of the other versions, Romeo entered the balcony immediately after climbing up the wall. I think the director wants to set a small distance between the lovers when they are together, and of course, they didn't kiss. This way, the plot is closer to the original play.
  In conclusion, the film did a great job on reflexing the original version of the play and add a good amount of details to demonstrate it, I like this version a lot.
 
Cited resource:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0125480/