Subsequent film versions would make use of less experienced, but more photogenic, actors in the central roles. The film nevertheless received four Oscar nominations. the effect of even the best scenes is to distract." Cinemagoers considered the film too "arty", staying away as they had from Warner's A Midsummer Night Dream a year before: leading to Hollywood abandoning the Bard for over a decade.
Graham Greene wrote that he was "less than ever convinced that there is an aesthetic justification for filming Shakespeare at all. Neither critics nor the public responded enthusiastically, although Robert Osborne has stated that the film was a success when he hosted a telecast of it on Turner Classic Movies.
Ĭlusters of images are used to define the central characters: Romeo is first sighted leaning against a ruined building in an arcadian scene, complete with a pipe-playing shepherd and his sheepdog the livelier Juliet is associated with Capulet's formal garden, with its decorative fish pond. He speaks lines which Shakespeare gave to other Capulet servants, making him the instigator of the opening brawl. The role of Peter is enlarged, and played by Andy Devine as a faint-hearted bully. The party scene, choreographed by Agnes de Mille, includes Rosaline (an unseen character in Shakespeare's script) who rebuffs Romeo. A number of scenes are expanded as opportunities for visual spectacle, including the opening brawl (set against the backdrop of a religious procession), the wedding and Juliet's funeral. In contrast, the role of Friar Laurence (an important character in the play) is much reduced. Several scenes are interpolated, including three sequences featuring Friar John in Mantua. However, Jennings retains more of Shakespeare's poetry for the young lovers than any of his big-screen successors. Others are filmic: designed to replace words with action, or rearranging scenes in order to introduce groups of characters in longer narrative sequences. Many of these cuts are common ones in the theatre, such as the second appearance of the chorus and the comic scene of Peter with the musicians. Like most Shakespearean filmmakers, Cukor and his screenwriter Talbot Jennings cut much of the original script: playing around 45% of it. The shoot extended to six months, and the budget reached $2 million, making it MGM's most expensive film since the 1925 silent Ben-Hur. Thalberg cast screen actors, rather than stage actors, but shipped-in East Coast drama coaches (such as the acclaimed Frances Robinson Duff to coach Norma Shearer - who had never acted on stage) with the unfortunate consequence that actors previously adored for their naturalism gave what are now considered stilted performances. Tybalt is usually portrayed as a hot-headed troublemaker, but Basil Rathbone played him as stuffy and pompous. Romeo wears gloves in the balcony scene, and Juliet has a pet fawn. with a preposterously mature pair of lovers in Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer, and an elderly John Barrymore as a stagey Mercutio decades out of date." Barrymore was in his late fifties, and played Mercutio as a flirtatious tease. Scholar Stephen Orgel describes Cukor's film as "largely miscast.
Leslie Howard as Romeo and Norma Shearer as Juliet, in the 1936 MGM film directed by George Cukor. Thalberg's vision was that the performance of Norma Shearer, his wife, would dominate the picture. Thalberg had only one choice for director: George Cukor, who was known as "the women's director". The film includes two songs drawn from other plays by Shakespeare: "Come Away Death" from Twelfth Night and "Honour, Riches, Marriage, Blessing" from The Tempest. of Cornell) were flown to the set, with instructions to criticise the production freely. Thalberg's stated intention was "to make the production what Shakespeare would have wanted had he possessed the facilities of cinema." He went to great lengths to establish authenticity and the film's intellectual credentials: researchers were sent to Verona to take photographs for the designers the paintings of Botticelli, Bellini, Carpaccio and Gozzoli were studied to provide visual inspiration and two academic advisers (John Tucker Murray of Harvard and William Strunk, Jr.
Warner announced his intention to film Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream that Mayer, not to be outdone, gave Thalberg the go-ahead. Mayer's belief that the masses considered the Bard over their heads, and from the austerity forced on the studios by the depression. Producer Irving Thalberg pushed MGM for five years to make a Romeo and Juliet, in the face of the studio's opposition: which stemmed from Louis B. Main article: Romeo and Juliet (1936 film)