Romeo and Juliet (1936) - George Cukor

Another spare no expense lavish MGM production perpetuating the decade long task of making Norma Shearer a respectable actress. George Cukor already in favor with his grade A job on the previous year's David Copperfield, was tapped yet again to bring another classic piece of literature to the world. His directorial skills may have been in demand, but Cukor the skilled technician was not yet fully developed. Some of the continuity (particularly the final swordfight) is laughably mismatched, and the film's inherent fault is how to have Leslie Howard (43) and Shearer (34) as the teenage lovers. The battles have a Hollywood tendency to be more spectacle than carry any remote weight. However with a story of this magnitude its hard to really do a bad job of it. I can't help even now to watch the film praying that Juliet wakes up before Romeo takes the poison or that all important letter reaches Romeo before taking off. In that regard this film differs greatly from the majority of Hollywood films produced before or after by fiercely denying the happy ending. John Barrymore, something of a Cukor regular at this point, does a fine job as the over the top Mercucio, a performance very much in the same vein as his turn in Twentieth Century.

*Romeo and Juliet was nominated for best picture, best actress (Shearer), best art direction, and best supporting actor (Basil Rathbone)