Romeo and Juliet influenced Romeo and Juliet

Zeffirelli's film is Shakespeare's play, cut heavily but played in the original language. Its break with the staging tradition of the time was to cast actors close to the characters' ages: Leonard Whiting was seventeen and Olivia Hussey fifteen, against a convention of established adult actors. The film's reputation rests on that decision, and the film has been re-examined since on the same ground.