Wasn't the selling point for this entire adaptation that it was the first 'age appropriate' screen version of the story? Which of course is a little awkward now. That's what the
making of documentary (which I am surprised is not on the disc) is playing up. The 1967 and 2016 interviews with Hussey and Whiting are likely to be the
Now and Then interview and the later
BFI interview. So there does not look to me too much new material on here.
On the film itself, I remember liking it when I last saw it but its very much a 'traditional' adaptation, just with the opportunity to see the story played out on castle locations and with its iconic score (making it part of a tradition of the time of the scores to romantic films being better than the accompanying films: see A Man and a Woman and Love Story. And, uh, Bilitis 8-[ ), and with the age aspect being the new wrinkle to its production. Its about on par with the BBC production from a decade later (which has the first screen performance by Alan Rickman as Tybalt) and I always think it is good to see a 'normal' version of a Shakespeare play before seeing all the revisionist takes on it, although that opinion should be taken with the knowledge that I put this on a par with the 2012 Swarovski-crystal sponsored, post-Twilight and Young Adult in general influenced film of the play (which I also quite like but which is a similarly conservative adaptation. Though I would argue that the big twist with that particular production is that - following on in the tradition of all the Young Adult films - the pouting and smouldering boys are made up to out-prettify the more down to earth girls!)
I am definitely not upset to see it join the collection, mostly though because without this making Olivia Hussey a star we may not have gotten her later great starring roles in 70s films
All The Right Noises (which
really plays on the underage angle!) and of course in the original Black Christmas.
Plus having the main characters played by actual teens does add an interesting spin on the material, in the sense that it does make the star-cross'd lovers seem much more adolescent (even petulant and impulsively hot-headed) than when they are played by actors in their mid-20s. And it kind of makes Juliet's father seem more sympathetic and a little less of a tyrant when he is actually making sweeping demands of a child that he feels responsible for rather than a full grown woman! (Which is perhaps where Romeo & Juliet makes for a fun contrast against The Taming of the Shrew, where it
is a father desperately trying to offload an adult daughter who he feels should have been married off long ago!)
It also makes more sense of the nanny figure being there too, to look after the child. Although then the nanny being complicit in the illicit adolescent love affair might become more awkward!
