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Franco Zeffirelli apprenticed to Luchino Visconti, stage directed operas and directed several movie hits, the biggest of which was this exuberant, attractive Shakespeare adaptation, filmed like an opera with sumptuous sets and sunswept Italian locations. The novelty for 1968 was casting the Bard’s star-crossed young lovers with actual teenagers. Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting are attractive kids directed to give spirited performances; the critics may have had mixed reactions but the public received the film well. If memory serves, Criterion’s new remaster looks better than Paramount’s original release prints.

Romeo and Juliet

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1171

1968 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 138 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 14, 2023 / 39.95

Starring: Leonard Whiting, Olivia Hussey, John McEnery, Milo O’Shea, Pat Heywood, Robert Stephens, Michael York, Bruce Robinson, Paul Hardwick, Natasha Parry, Antonio Pierfederici, Esmeralda Ruspoli, Roberto Bisacco, Roy Holder, Keith Skinner, Dyson Lovell, Richard Warwick, Laurence Olivier.

Cinematography: Pasquelino De...

The First Churchills.

Kieran Kinsella

We’re all familiar with Winston but how many of us know much about The First Churchills? Well for those who don’t know, Britain’s war-time Pm traced his lineage back to the court of King Charles II, and the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough Aka The First Churchills. The cigar smoking nemesis of the Nazis wrote a biography of his aristocratic ancestors and in 1969 the BBC dramatized the story. The 12 part series was an instant success. Drama starved executives on the other side of the pond soon snapped it up and began airing it on PBS in a new time slot called Masterpiece Theatre. Yes British TV watchers, The First Churchills isn’t just about English history it is also a landmark series in the British invasion of American networks. On 4 June, Acorn Media are reviving this lost classic on DVD.

Three-time Emmy...

Shot entirely on location in the incredible Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire, England, director Derek Jarman’s re-imagining of The Tempest is a bizarro Shakespearian fever dream that actually does stick to much of the original story, but incorporates Jarman’s signature homoerotic imagery and straight up odd visual style. If you know this classic tale, you’ll follow the story with relative ease, picking out bits and pieces of Shakespeare’s original dialogue, but if you don’t know it by heart, Jarman’s vision can quickly become a confusing mash of bugged out Old English recantation and supernatural struggles of power.

Like the original story, the film centers around the magician and ex-Duke of Milan, Prospero (Heathecote Williams), along with his beautiful daughter Miranda (Toyah Willcox) and their downright scary servant, Caliban (Jack Birkett), all of which now live alone in a decrepit mansion on an island. Only visible to Prospero,...

If.... Directed by: Lindsay Anderson Written by: David Sherwin Starring: Malcolm McDowell, David Wood, Richard Warwick, Robert Swann Lindsay Anderson's 1968 film If…. sets a counterculture revolution within the walls of an English public school, creating an allegorical fantasy which reflects the volatile atmosphere of the time. Featuring a pre-Clockwork Orange Malcolm McDowell, comparisons to Kubrick's masterpiece aren't totally misguided. Both films are populated with rebellious youths and flashes of ultra-violence, but Anderson's approach is a less austere look at aggression as a means of change rather than simply a way to curb boredom. The film begins with the start of the school year at an English school for boys. While the youngest kids (do they call them freshman in England?) attempt to navigate the halls of the school and acclimatize to the demands of their surroundings, Mick Travis (McDowell) returns for another year, lugging a giant suitcase and sporting...