--- title: "Romeo and Juliet" year: 1936 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/romeo-and-juliet" fi1m_score: 63 critics_reviews: 3 published: "2026-09-19T23:17:27.442532+00:00" updated: "2026-09-19T23:18:02.551821+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Romeo and Juliet (1936) Directed by George Cukor · 2h 05m · MPA NR · Drama, Romance **Fi1m score: 63** · Critics: 3 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* The most expensive Verona ever built, and its teenagers are pushing forty > George Cukor’s Shakespeare is faithful, handsome and carefully spoken, and it treats a play about two children in a hurry as if it were a state occasion. Barrymore, Edna May Oliver and ten minutes on a balcony are the reasons to stay. ## Synopsis Verona. The Montagues and the Capulets have brawled so long that Prince Escalus (Conway Tearle) threatens death to whoever breaks the peace next. Romeo (Leslie Howard) is moping over a girl called Rosaline, so Mercutio (John Barrymore) and Benvolio (Reginald Denny) drag him, masked, into the Capulets’ ball, where Lord Capulet (C. Aubrey Smith) is arranging to marry his daughter Juliet (Norma Shearer) to Paris (Ralph Forbes). Romeo sees Juliet, forgets Rosaline, and is spotted by her cousin Tybalt (Basil Rathbone), who has to be held back from a fight. That night Romeo climbs into the Capulet garden, Juliet appears at her window, and by morning they have asked Friar Laurence (Henry Kolker) to marry them in secret, with only her Nurse (Edna May Oliver) in on it. ## Review Irving Thalberg produced it, George Cukor directed it, and the intention is plain in every frame: to prove that Hollywood could do Shakespeare without embarrassing itself. It does not embarrass itself. This is a faithful, handsome, carefully spoken 125 minutes that keeps a great deal of the text and treats the play like an heirloom. The trouble is that the heirloom is a story about two children who meet, marry and come to grief inside a week, and nothing here moves as if it knew that. Norma Shearer was in her mid-thirties when she played Juliet and Leslie Howard was past forty when he played Romeo, and the film knows we know it. Shearer’s answer is lightness: she runs, she laughs, she turns her head quickly, she plays a girl who has never had to wait for anything. In the early scenes it works better than it has any right to. Howard’s answer is thought. He speaks the verse as a man who understands every line of it, and the result is a Romeo who has read *Romeo and Juliet*, which is not quite the same as being him. And yet the balcony scene got to us. We had come braced to be polite about it, and instead we sat forward. Shearer plays it as a girl who cannot believe her luck and Howard as a man who cannot believe his, and for ten minutes the ages fall away and the words come out as if nobody had ever said them before. William H. Daniels lights the garden in soft silver and holds Shearer in close-up long enough for the lines to land. It is the one stretch where the film is about the two of them rather than about the play. Elsewhere the life is in the supporting cast. John Barrymore plays Mercutio as a man who has never left a party of his own accord, ripe and showy and slightly dangerous, and he delivers the Queen Mab speech as a drunk’s turn that keeps getting away from him. We laughed, and we were meant to. Edna May Oliver’s Nurse is dry, bossy and endlessly delayed in getting to the point, and she has the best comic timing in the film. Basil Rathbone gives Tybalt a lean, coiled menace; he is the only person in Verona who looks as if he could hurt someone. C. Aubrey Smith plays Lord Capulet as a retired English colonel, and Andy Devine’s gravel voice as the servant Peter is an odd joke that the film tells once and then forgets. The production is enormous and it wants you to notice. The Capulet ball is staged as a spectacle first and a scene second, with dancers filling the frame while the plot waits at the edge of it. Adrian dresses everyone in heavy Renaissance velvets and headdresses that belong in a museum, and the actors move like people who have been told what the costumes cost. Herbert Stothart’s strings swell whenever the lovers look at each other, which is often, and tell us what to feel a moment before Shearer has had the chance to. Margaret Booth cuts with patience, and patience is the problem: scenes are laid out as tableaux and left to sit. Somewhere in the second hour we caught ourselves admiring a doorway. That is the honest measure of it. The play’s engine is speed, a marriage within a day and a catastrophe within days of that, and Cukor, who is at his best with actors in rooms, has here let the rooms win. The diction is a real virtue, and anyone who wants to hear the text spoken clearly by people who understand it will get that. Whether they will get the play’s panic is another matter. Every later version has answered this one by getting younger. Franco Zeffirelli cast teenagers in 1968; Baz Luhrmann put guns and neon under the verse in 1996. Both understood that the film needs to feel as reckless as its lovers, and neither is as well spoken as this. See it for Barrymore, for Oliver, for Rathbone’s Tybalt and for the balcony. The ending is the most famous in the language and we will not spell it out; the film takes its time getting there. *Fi1m score 63, published 19 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (3) - **The New Yorker**, John C. Mosher (70/100, inferred): The M-G-M production is a conscientious, scholarly, and sensible presentation of the play, with careful attention to detail, text, and sound recording that makes it valuable as a reference film. Norma Shearer succeeds in portraying a youthful Juliet with light comedy talent, though the overall result feels somewhat cumbersome and schoolroom-like. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1936/08/22/1936-08-22-048-tny-cards-000022448) - **The New York Times**, Frank S. Nugent (70/100, inferred): Metro's lavish production is a handsome and lovely achievement that brings Shakespeare vividly to the screen through superb photography, opulent costuming, and brisk direction by George Cukor. The film realizes the screen's potential as a medium for the play while leaving open whether Shakespeare suits the screen perfectly. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1936/08/21/archives/metros-film-of-romeo-and-juliet-opens-at-the-astor-my-american-wife.html) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (50/100, inferred): The film is a faithful if somewhat unimaginative screen translation of Shakespeare's play, with strong lyric qualities retained but a slower pace than modern storytelling. Norma Shearer delivers a restrained, youthful Juliet, and the balcony scene is played sincerely. [Read](https://variety.com/1935/film/reviews/romeo-and-juliet-2-1200411192/) ## Details - **Director:** George Cukor - **Director:** George Cukor - **Cinematography:** William H. Daniels - **Editor:** Margaret Booth - **Music:** Herbert Stothart - **Costume design:** Adrian - **Producer:** Irving Thalberg - **Cast:** Norma Shearer as Juliet; Leslie Howard as Romeo; John Barrymore as Mercutio; Edna May Oliver as Juliet's Nurse; Basil Rathbone as Tybalt; C. Aubrey Smith as Lord Capulet; Andy Devine as Peter; Conway Tearle as Escalus - **Runtime:** 2h 05m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 3 September 1936 - **Genres:** Drama, Romance ## Where to watch in the US Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check. Also available in: GB. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1937: Best Actress (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Production Design (nominated); Best Supporting Actor (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Romeo + Juliet* (1996), Fi1m 82: Luhrmann’s version has the speed and recklessness Cukor’s lacks, and leads the right age — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/romeo-juliet.md) - *Romeo and Juliet* (1968): Zeffirelli cast actual teenagers and the play stops being a museum piece - *Henry V* (1944), Fi1m 82: Olivier’s Shakespeare in colour, and a film that knows it is a film — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/henry-v-1944.md) - *Throne of Blood* (1957): Kurosawa moves *Macbeth* to feudal Japan and keeps only what matters - *Camille* (1936): Cukor and Daniels the same year, with Garbo and a doomed love that moves --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. 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