Whiting and Hussey have a powerful screen chemistry, and the way they exchange glances, especially when they first spy each other across the dance floor in the film’s most captivating sequence, is electric.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 27, 2023

As Romeo and Juliet, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting exhibit an innocence, naïveté, and verve that enlivens their characters, making them feel startlingly modern even as they’re reciting Shakespearean verse.

| Mar 7, 2023

There’s elements of subversion, violence, and sex that you’d see in other envelope-pushing movies from that time, such as Barbarella, The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Rosemary’s Baby, and others.

| Feb 16, 2023

Like his contemporary Luchino Visconti, Zeffirelli uses his opera-directing knowledge to get the most out of the story with gorgeous costumes, striking production design, and crisp cinematography...

| Feb 13, 2023

The movie wears well, and is certainly better than I remembered, but time has also made it a different film, in certain ways closer to Shakespeare than it used to be or was probably meant to be.

| Feb 8, 2023

Writer-director Franco Zeffirelli does some major surgery on the fabric of Shakespeare’s drama and finds a vibrant, surging, full-blooded new life beneath.

| Mar 2, 2022

Thank God for Shakespeare, and viva Zeffirelli, the moviemaker who can bring Shakespeare's genius even to a generation of cool, television-conditioned McLuhanite kids.

| Jan 7, 2021

Nina Rota's music is outstanding, and the scene of Romeo and Juliet's wedding with Rota's haunting score and that closing, medium shot, creates huge pathos for the lovers.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 31, 2020

A Juliet who knocks back the potion on a single line of dialogue, as though taking a quick swig of after-hours cocoa, is not to my mind entirely Juliet.

| Jul 12, 2018

This more-or-less unprecedented naturalism in screen Shakespeare is part and parcel of why the film works so well, and why it was such a huge success in 1968.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 26, 2018

The Italian locations look glorious, and Nino Rota (The Godfather) contributes one of his finest scores.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 2, 2017

The sets are tight and stagey, every corner is decorated with baroque lushness, every shot framed by a velvet curtain or silvery branch. And the dialogue isn't caged in by any attempts at naturalism.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 20, 2016

High-minded and lively, with heartbreakingly beautiful actors on show, and all shot in a kind of honeycomb-sunglow light.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 19, 2016

Neither lead is a skilled actor, but the film's lush and unrepentant romanticism carries the day

| Original Score: 71/100 | Jul 28, 2013

Despite major trimmings of Shakespeare's text, this is a lovely version of the much-filmed play, largely due to the casting of the leads with handsome, unknown teenagers.

| Original Score: A- | Mar 29, 2011

Wonderful, but a little too mature for some kids.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 2, 2011

For many, this remains the definitive big-screen Romeo And Juliet.

| Jan 22, 2008

Mostly it remains enjoyable for its color and visual flair.

| Feb 9, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 5, 2004

Cheesy at best, but perfect school Shakespeare.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 23, 2004