The Zeffirelli film confirmed that it is possible to make a faithful adaptation without sacrificing the dramatic immediacy and urgency necessary to make the tale compelling. I felt proud to be the only one noticing that angry Tybalt, played by Michael York, would grow up to be the much mellower Basil Exposition of the Austin Powers series. We were swept away by the soaring musical leitmotifs, the Italian locations, the men in very tight tights, or, in the case of Juliet, sometimes not wearing any clothes at all. Directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, that film stunned our adolescent minds with its depiction of nubile lovers in a hostile world. I remember sitting in a rather dilapidated theatre as a high school freshman when throngs of English students, in place of doing an inevitably boring table-read of the play, were treated to a screening of the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet.
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