Romeo and Juliet from Page to Screen
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Chapter 5: Romeo and Juliet from Page to Screen This chapter examines the process of translation of Romeo and Juliet from page to screen, focussing on four Italian films: Renato Castellani’s Romeo and Juliet (1954), Riccardo Freda’s Romeo e Giulietta (1964), Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) and Roberta Torre’s Sud Side Stori (2000). While Castellani’s and Zeffirelli’s films are well-known among an international public, Freda’s and Torre’s films are almost unknown. The analysis adopts Cattrysse’s target-oriented, star-like model, which attempts to identify the different sources or models that have affected the translation from page to screen. As highlighted in Chapter One, Cattrysse’s multilateral approach offers a useful and comprehensive framework for the analysis of film adaptations, as it considers the differences between play and film as determined by directorial view and other semiotic devices such as cinematic conventions, other films, theatre productions or texts, etc. The role of the researcher is to look for these different models that might have influenced the production of the film. The film adaptations analysed here are seen as translations of Romeo and Juliet, some using more of Shakespeare’s text, others less, and referring also to other “source texts”. Our analysis endeavours to identify the factors that have affected the translation from page to screen, determining changes, cuts and additions. Particular attention is devoted to norms and conventions of the target cinematic system, and to the directors’ interpretations, as the chapter investigates how the different readings of Romeo and Juliet identified in Chapter Three may have impacted on the transposition from written text to film. 1. Renato Castellani’s Giulietta e Romeo, 1954 In 1954 neorealist filmmaker Renato Castellani directed Giulietta e Romeo, an Italian/British production with British protagonists (Laurence Harvey, 25, and Susan Shentall, 19) and a cast of British and Italian actors. Following cinema conventions of the time and of neorealist films in particular, the film was originally acted in English (the main characters were played by British actors, but there were also several non-professional actors) and then dubbed into English and Italian using the technique of post-synch.1 Castellani’s Romeo and Juliet was the first colour film version of the play, the first to be shot on location2 and the first to cast young actors that had approximately the same age as the lovers. Indeed, Susan Shentall and Laurence Harvey were definitely much younger than film stars Norma Shearer (34) and Leslie Howard (42), who had played the leading roles in Reclaiming Romeo and Juliet George Cukor’s 1936 film. As pointed out by Anthony Davies (1996: 156), “the film set a clear trend in the casting of young actors […] as the two young lovers.” Although the film won the Venice Film Festival as best film that year, critical response by reviewers as well as scholars was, indeed still is, divided, and mainly centred upon the much debated issue of faithfulness to Shakespeare, or freedom of the cinema as an art form. As Kenneth Rothwell (1999b: 126) observes, “bardophiles despised Castellani’s Romeo and Juliet because it put movie making ahead of the text, while the cinéphiles saw it as a work of art independent of its literary source.” Douglas Brode (2000: 50) points out that the film was “lauded in Italy” but “scorned in England” and Jackson has remarked that “for the most part British reviewers were unenthusiastic, and in some cases there was a degree of nationalistic hostility” (2007: 187). A critic in the Financial Times argued that “this ‘prodigious attempt at Anglo-Italian mutual aid’ had resulted only in ‘a prodigious Anglo-Italian mess’” (in Jackson 2007: 186), while a Time reviewer commented that “Castellani’s Romeo and Juliet is a fine poem. Unfortunately, it is not Shakespeare’s poem!” (in Brode 2000: 50-51). Another reviewer argued that “never, I imagine, since Lear received a happy ending, has any Shakespeare text been so hacked, patched, and insensitively thrown away” (in Rothwell 1999b: 126). Brode (2000: 51) maintains that it is difficult to judge Castellani’s film, and concludes that “as cinema, it’s terrific; as an adaptation of a great play, it’s terrible.” According to Roger Manvell, the success of the film at the Venice Film Festival was due to the audience’s response to “a splendidly colourful reincarnation of fifteenth century Italy in Technicolour [while] there were few present in the audience […] who cared one way or the other whether the film kept reasonable faith with Shakespeare” (1971: 97). If judged in terms of how faithful it is to its literary source, the film can be easily seen as a deformation and a betrayal of Shakespeare’s masterpiece. Brode’s comments on Castellani’s changes and desecrative cuts to Shakespeare’s play exemplify this attitude: Castellani felt free to drastically cut the original. Missing were memorable lines in the balcony scene, almost all the low-comedy relief (particularly Peter and the Nurse), as well as the Queen Mab dream speech, Mercutio himself reduced from Hamlet-like pre-existential voice to bit player. With the apothecary gone, Romeo stabbed himself rather than accomplish the deed with poison. Likewise, the director liberally added material, including a scene that explains why Friar John fails to deliver an all-important message to banished Romeo (Brode 2000: 50). However, as the following analysis will reveal, Castellani’s modifications and supposed “unfaithfulness” to the play are not arbitrarily made: they are “meaningful infidelities”. Castellani’s treason is a deliberate act: excisions as 164 .