William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet on Screen

THESIS ABSTRACT The aim of the thesis is to explore the film adaptations of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and to compare their thematic shifts of the adapted text. Primary focus will be put on Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968), Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996), and Carlo Carlei's Romeo & Juliet (2013). This choice does not entirely exclude other adaptations, as they will be alluded to whenever some of their features become relevant to the discussion at hand. The thesis is based on my reading of this tragedy and supplemented by secondary sources. It analyses three themes of the play, and subsequent adaptation issues, in order to introduce and compare the individual directors' readings of these particular instances and their overall narrative strategies applied in the films. The impact of the various renditions of the themes will be compared and examined in terms of its influence on the audience's perception of the plot. Currently, many people experience Shakespeare's plays trough film and it is productive to examine what perceptions of the plays they form when encountering the playwright in this re-created manner. Some of the questions that this analysis will address are: What visual means do the directors employ to establish new dimension to the adapted text? What is transmitted..