The Story of Romeo and Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s and Baz Luhrmann’s Cinematic Interpretations

The study of film interpretations of Shakespeare's plots is of widespread interest due to the growing role of cinema in relation to literature. Both in Russian (Fedoseenko 2019; Gaidin 2014; Levina 2017; Ternovskaya 2020) and in foreign literature studies (Brook 1998; Korte 2004; Marowitz 2004; Olney 2010; Walker 2000), researchers have attempted to explore visual interpretations of Shakespeare’s works. The purpose of the present study is to reveal how the story of Romeo and Juliet is interpreted in the films Romeo and Juliet (1968) by F. Zeffirelli and Romeo+Juliet (1996) by B. Luhrmann and to explain the reasons for the plot transformations. The research will be conducted with the use of an immanent approach and a comparative method of analysis. This study is located at the intersection of literature and cinema, and therefore the research will consider the refraction of the plot when the text is translated into the language of cinema. Key words: Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, English literature, visual interpretations, Zeffirelli, Luhrmann, plot transformations