After all, it had been less than a decade since West Side Story had successfully transformed the tale of young lovers from feuding families into a multiple Oscar winner with singing and dancing across an urban landscape. Perhaps never before had the young audiences for whom the film was targeted been so well primed and pumped for a version that blew all expectations of stodgy costume period pieces out of the water. The major theatrical release that most bucked the conventions of the year 1968 almost certainly has to be director Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy of star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet.įor an adaptation of one of the most familiar plays in the history of stage drama released just a little over a year after Bonnie and Clyde hit theaters, Zeffirelli’s film is almost shockingly straightforward and free from the kinds of gimmicks that the tragedy all but requires to sustain interest today. In retrospect, the most daring film released in 1968 was not Rosemary’s Baby or Night of the Living Deador even 2001: A Space Odyssey.
