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Star-Crossed Lovers® STAR-CROSSED LOVERS® A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts By Carolina Conte August 2001 2 STAR-CROSSED LOVERS® BY CAROLINA SIQUEIRA CONTE has been approved for the School of Film and the College of Fine Arts by Jenny Lau Associate Professor of International Film Studies Raymond Tymas-Jones Dean, College of Fine Arts 3 CONTE, CAROLINA S. M.A. August 2001. School of Film. Star-Crossed Lovers. (88pp.) Director of the Thesis: Jenny Lau This thesis develops an analyses on film adaptations, more specifically William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, concentrating on the two most popular films (in terms of audience): Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) and Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996). My analyses of the Shakespearean work adapted to the screen observes the nature of each of the media involved, theater and cinema, and how they relate to each other, in terms of differences and similarities, to bring the Shakespeare drama to the spectator according to different contexts. The first part of this writing addresses general comments on adaptation; the second part brings specific issues of having Shakespeare adapted in film; and the last part of the thesis discusses exclusively Romeo and Juliet from William Shakespeare’s play to the main film productions of this century, with special emphasis on Franco Zeffirelli’s and Baz Luhrmann’s films. In my conclusions I observe the contextual aspects that constitute these later adaptations of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet on the screen. Zeffirelli’s and Luhrmann’s films are examples of the creative potential of film adaptations and of the imperative of the adapted works to continue communicating the everlasting tragedy of the star-crossed lovers. Approved: Jenny Lau Associate Professor of International Film Studies 4 For Teo, Joe and Papai 5 Acknowledgments This work is the result of a study that started two years ago in my home country, thanks to my professor and friend the filmmaker Flávia Seligman. It was challenging for me to write this thesis in English, attempting to make myself clear in a foreign language. Therefore, I would like to thank my friend Justin Zimmerman and my advisor Jenny Lau for helping me in the rewritings. 6 Table of Contents Page Introduction ………………………………………………………………………….…..7 I. General Comments on Film Adaptations ………………………………...12 II. Adapting Shakespeare …….…….………………………………………….17 A. Adapting Time and Space in Films ……………………………………….....18 B. Shakespeare’s Dialogues in Film …………………………………………….25 C. Acting Performances in Shakespeare’s Films ………………………………..27 D. From Theater to Film ………….……………………………………………..29 III. Romeo and Juliet ……..……………………………………………………..31 A. From Shakespeare’s Life .…………………………………………………....32 B. Popularizing Shakespeare .…………………………………………………...35 C. Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare ………………………………….40 D. Romeo and Juliet Film Adaptations ………………………………………….46 IV. Analysis of the Films ……………………………………………………….56 A. Romeo and Juliet, by Franco Zeffirelli ……………………………………....56 B. William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, by Baz Luhrmann …………………65 VI. Conclusion ……..…………………………………………………………...78 Works cited ……………………………………………………………………………..85 7 Introduction Most of the discussions on adaptation tend to be narrowed to the issue of fidelity, always connecting the idea of adaptation as a reproduction of an original material, commonly seen as good or bad in terms of how faithful it is to the source. My observations on the subject follow the ideas found in the most recent writings on adaptation, which move away from moralistic analysis, avoiding “terms such as infidelity, betrayal, deformation, violation, vulgarization, and desecration… carrying its specific charge of outraged negativity.” (Robert Stam in Naremore, p.54) The issue that I want to address regarding adaptation is not fidelity, but the differences among the media involved in this process and what these differences entail. Moreover, I want to discuss adaptation not only as a technical process, but rather, as a technical process used to achieve certain artistic dimensions and addressed to particular audiences. Walter Benjamin, in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, states that the work of art has always been reproducible. The reproduced material however would always lack in the temporal and spatial elements which defines the aura, the uniqueness of the original piece of art. The authority of the original, the aura, is only present in a particular situation. Nevertheless, the lack of the aura does not really matter. 8 My approach to this matter constitutes only a supportive introduction to the main subject of this work, which purposes to develop an analyses of film adaptations of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, concentrating on the two most popular films (according to a pop culture assumption): Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) and Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996). My analyses of the Shakespearean work adapted to the big screen will observe the nature of each of the media involved, theater and cinema, and how they relate to each other, in terms of differences and similarities, to bring the Shakespeare drama to the spectator. Working with actual creative material, the universe created by the pen for the stage and particular examples of this universe recreated by the camera, I will be responding to the problem of this thesis, which is: how can a Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet, become an original and innovative cinematic work? Adapting art pieces implies a translation of language, a change of medium that inevitably creates a different product as result. An adaptation cannot exist as a copy of its source, it must be understood as an original work that exists by itself, adapting is to begin from what is thought to be an expandable source and develop creatively on it with technical processes of distinguished nature. Regardless of the acceptance and appreciation of its source (within its particular medium), in an adaptation what really matters is if it is efficiently translated to the new medium, and its acceptance, appreciation, as a film – and nothing else. The source might be present in the film in variable degrees, but mostly as an outside material to inspire transcending ideas, creative possibilities, toward the construction of a personal and unique interpretation of a given 9 reality. The source might be a novel, a romance, a historical fact, a poem or a play, the key element in adapting is not in re-telling the source, but rather, to approach it under another perspective, according to a different context. The medium changing carries the original and creative elements of the process, once it elucidates new and unique manners of constructing a new “product.” An adaptation must clearly express the different ways in which it was made and the finality of its realization. Shakespeare produced extraordinary plays whose complexity and brilliance always affect in some manner anyone who turns his/her attention to him, even for the time of a look. The Bard was able to comment not only on his society but on people in such a manner that the form and content of his work, even after more than four hundred years, remain a wide focus of interest. The context has changed but the social functioning, the human psyche and the way people communicate their emotions, still operate in the same way, and that is why the secular Shakespeare’s legacy had become a filmic appropriation as well. This “young medium” (if compared to theater), besides its intrinsic capability to tell people about the “what” of something, must be always looking for a “how,” to accomplish a different interpretations to the “what.” Filmmaking involves an impressive technological apparatus, capable of many accomplishments, but also represents an artistic medium which can communicate with a vast number of people, a wide audience never before imagined. Shakespeare and film met, not accidentally, and became a relevant and exciting matter of discussion. This encounter now evokes not only the merits of the writer and the “new” medium, but the diffusion of an unquestionable piece of art to an uncountable number of spectators through the means of the film 10 industry and its commercial implications. It would be hard to say which one was more determinant for this fact, the quality of the work as a film or the intense adaptation of this work, but the truth is that Shakespeare’s version of the tragedy of the young lovers has perpetuated as the universal love story. Romeo and Juliet was based on previous sources that Shakespeare adapted to write his stage version in 1595. Film is not the only medium responsible for making Romeo and Juliet an universal love story, but, nowadays, it certainly made important contributions to turn it into one of the most popular of Shakespeare’s plays. What comes to support such statement is the character of the two most successful Romeo and Juliet productions: Zeffirelli’s and Luhrmann’s were popular orientated Shakespeare films, very successfully in box-office numbers, if compared to any other Shakespeare adaptation on the screen. Luhrmann’s film was “the number one grossing film in America the weekend it opened,” (Gary Taylor in Desmet and Sawyer, 1999, p.197) and Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet also generated “immense profit in the box- office.” (Rothwell, 1999, p.133) The questions to be answered regarding the Romeo and Juliet films arise from the same realm of any adaptation, which I already mentioned, but increase in complexity because of the level of artistic-aura occupied by Shakespeare and the mass consumption society in which we live today: how was the translation of media made? With what finality? Accomplishing what significance? The first part of this writing is destined to issues of adaptation, the translation of different languages, the adoption of different media, as a progressive act of creation of a new artistic piece.
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