It's always interesting to see familiar faces in unfamiliar roles. I saw just enough of this version of Romeo and Juliet to find it an enjoyable curiosity. Where else can you see Sherlock Holmes -- I mean Basil Rathbone -- playing Tybalt, and doing a damned good job of it. At least he sounds as if he'd read the play, and he gets to do the unidimensional mean shtick that was his forte before he became a detective.
Other memorable performances are by C. Aubrey Smith, Reginald Denny, and Edna May Oliver, whose old-fashioned New England is easily transposed into Elizabethan English via fair Verona.
The two leads -- Leslie Howard as Romeo and Norma Shearer as Juliet -- are problematic. For one thing they're too old for the parts. One of the reasons Romeo is not a particularly bright kid is that he's inexperienced. He's still mooning over Rosaline when -- one glance at Juliet and it's love at first sight, at second sight, at ever and ever sight. "He jests at scars, that never felt a wound," broods Romeo, but he hasn't the slightest idea of what wounds lay inevitably ahead for any human being. (Howard delivers the line as a kind of jokey wisecrack, though.) Norma Shearer ought to be a teeny bopper instead of the wife of somebody who's important at the studio. In her close ups, George Cukor seems to have wrapped the lens in silk stockings. And she's less convincing than Leslie Howard, but that may be only because British accents seem so much more fitting.
John Barrymore as Mercutio is WAY too old for the part but is nevertheless in a class by himself. Whether it's a performance "by" John Barrymore or "of" John Barrymore, it seems to work, in its own quietly overwhelming way. The other players seem to stand back when Barrymore has any lines.
The only embarrassment is Andy Devine, who belongs behind six horses.
The set dressing by Cedric Gibbons and wardrobe by Adrian of the Big Shoulders is colorful and evocative. I'm not sure why anybody but Tchaikovsky got credit for the musical score.
The plot of the play is pretty loopy but this presentation is nothing to be ashamed of. I can't comment on the last half, which I wasn't able to watch.
Other memorable performances are by C. Aubrey Smith, Reginald Denny, and Edna May Oliver, whose old-fashioned New England is easily transposed into Elizabethan English via fair Verona.
The two leads -- Leslie Howard as Romeo and Norma Shearer as Juliet -- are problematic. For one thing they're too old for the parts. One of the reasons Romeo is not a particularly bright kid is that he's inexperienced. He's still mooning over Rosaline when -- one glance at Juliet and it's love at first sight, at second sight, at ever and ever sight. "He jests at scars, that never felt a wound," broods Romeo, but he hasn't the slightest idea of what wounds lay inevitably ahead for any human being. (Howard delivers the line as a kind of jokey wisecrack, though.) Norma Shearer ought to be a teeny bopper instead of the wife of somebody who's important at the studio. In her close ups, George Cukor seems to have wrapped the lens in silk stockings. And she's less convincing than Leslie Howard, but that may be only because British accents seem so much more fitting.
John Barrymore as Mercutio is WAY too old for the part but is nevertheless in a class by himself. Whether it's a performance "by" John Barrymore or "of" John Barrymore, it seems to work, in its own quietly overwhelming way. The other players seem to stand back when Barrymore has any lines.
The only embarrassment is Andy Devine, who belongs behind six horses.
The set dressing by Cedric Gibbons and wardrobe by Adrian of the Big Shoulders is colorful and evocative. I'm not sure why anybody but Tchaikovsky got credit for the musical score.
The plot of the play is pretty loopy but this presentation is nothing to be ashamed of. I can't comment on the last half, which I wasn't able to watch.