Romeo and Juliet (1936 Film) - Reception

Reception

Some critics liked the film, but on the whole, neither critics nor the public responded enthusiastically. Graham Greene wrote that he was "less than ever convinced that there is an aesthetic justification for filming Shakespeare at all... the effect of even the best scenes is to distract." Cinemagoers considered the film too "arty", staying away as they had from Warner's A Midsummer Night Dream a year before: leading to Hollywood abandoning the Bard for over a decade. The film nevertheless received four Oscar nominations and for many years was considered one of the great MGM classics. In his annual Movie and Video Guide, Leonard Maltin gives both this film version and the extremely popular 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version (with Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting) an equal rating of three-and-a-half stars.

Today, the most noticeable element of the film, aside from the quality of the acting, is that nearly every actor in it is too old for his or her role, especially those who are playing teenagers. Leslie Howard, as Romeo, was forty-three when he made the film. John Barrymore, who plays Mercutio, was fifty-four when he made the film and, with his looks aged by years of drinking, could not avoid appearing old enough to be Romeo's father. Even C. Aubrey Smith, who plays the role of Juliet's father Lord Capulet, was seventy-three years old and looked it, and Henry Kolker, who portrayed Friar Lawrence, was sixty-six. Subsequent film versions would make use of "younger, less experienced but more photogenic actors" in the central roles. Cukor, interviewed in 1970, said of his film: "It's one picture that if I had to do over again, I'd know how. I'd get the garlic and the Mediterranean into it."