Romeo + Juliet (1996) -- film adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Duncan Fraser (University of Sussex)

Ed. by William M. Hamlin, Washington State University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.03: English Writing and Culture: Renaissance (Elizabethan and Jacobean periods) , 1485-1625.
Vol. editors: William M. Hamlin (Washington State University), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University), Ema Vyroubalova (Trinity College Dublin)

Domains

Cinema/ Film/ TV

Dates

Date of occurrence 1996

Places

United States (Location)
Australia (Involved)

Genres and Modes

Adaptation

Resources

Recommended Reading

Adapted from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Directed by Baz Luhrmann. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, Harold Perrineau, John Leguizamo, Pete Postlethwaite, and Miriam Margolyes. Colour. 115 minutes.

Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet is, as Deborah Cartmell says, “one of the most visually radical screen adaptations of Shakespeare” (2000). Set, with an ironic glance at the original play’s location, in Verona Beach, USA (though actually filmed mostly in Mexico City and Veracruz), the film is an extravaganza of over-determined ludic post-modernism that throws itself into a hyperactive interrogation of theatre, cinema,…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1158 words

Citation: Fraser, Duncan. "Romeo + Juliet (1996) -- film adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 August 2018 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19510, accessed 24 April 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here