Film Analysis Of Romeo And Juliet

As portrayed throughout both Romeo and Juliet films, love is an affectionate feeling, which can be powerful and influential in some cases, and sacrificial in other cases. In both Baz Luhrmann, and Franco Zeffirelli’s own takes on Romeo and Juliet, they review the various types of love shown by the characters, these being familial love, romantic love, friendship, and others. This allows for the audience to analyse the disparate film techniques used by both directors in order to depict the love shown between both the Montague house, and the Capulet house.

Evidently, Zeffirelli uses a diverse range of film techniques to emphasise the friendship between Romeo and Mercutio, and the familial love shown from both Tybalt from the Capulet house, and

As Romeo enters the cemetery, unknown to Juliet’s ‘fake’ death, the director uses close-ups of Romeo when he is confronting Juliet, and mid-shots of Juliet, showing her laying asleep upon the presence of Romeo. As the scene starts to progress, Zeffirelli uses a similar mid-shot, with various angles from around the setting, showing Romeo standing over Juliet as she lay there. These camera shots are directed to the audience to show the importance of this scene, and the romantic love portrayed by especially Romeo. The director also uses a soft, ambient music to set the mood of the scene and fill the silence when there is no dialogue from either Romeo or Juliet. The smooth and sleek type of music indicates to the audience that this is not an action-packed scene, however a calm and loving scene. Compared to Zeffirelli’s version of this scene, where he uses many mid-shots, and close-ups, and uses ambient music, Luhrmann uses a very intense music to entice the audience into whats happening, and uses many long shots showing Romeo looking down upon Juliet in the cemetery setting. This profound style of music not only set the scene for the audience, but also ties in with whats is occuring. This is because the music started to dramatise when Romeo sees Juliet, and starts to confront her on her bed, further emphasising the compassion Romeo has for Juliet. The long shots used by the director show the church-type setting in which this scene is situated. We, as viewers, see the surroundings of Romeo and Juliet through these shots, showing Juliet laying on her ‘death’ bed with many candles surrounding her. Also, these long shots are directed to inform the audience that both Romeo and Juliet are by themselves, and alone. We are again enticed by this as it highlights