Teacher Guide
Learning goals, teaching notes, and answer keys.
View Teacher NotesPaper & online answer keysRomeo and Juliet (1968) Movie Guide
Choose the format that fits your classroom, then explore the film through focused questions and evidence.
About the Film
Young lovers seek a relationship across a family feud. This 1968 adaptation uses period settings, performance, and music to interpret Shakespeare’s tragedy.
Movie at a Glance
- Release year
- 1968
- Genre
- Literary romantic tragedy
- U.S. rating
- PG
- Runtime
- Approx. 138 minutes
- Director
- Franco Zeffirelli
- Screenplay
- Franco Brusati, Masolino D’Amico & Franco Zeffirelli
- Based on
- William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
- Music
- Nino Rota
- Featured cast
- Leonard Whiting, Olivia Hussey, John McEnery & Milo O’Shea
- Story setting
- Renaissance Verona and Mantua, Italy
Check your edition when planning class periods; cuts and playback speeds can change runtime.
Content to Preview
- Brief bedroom nudity and implied sexual activity involving teenage characters.
- Sword fights, bloody injury, deaths, and suicide by poison and stabbing.
- Threatening family pressure and sexual jokes; emotional intensity.
Preview your edition, follow school viewing and permission policies, and provide an appropriate alternative assignment. Suggested grades 9–12 are Teach Arcade’s classroom recommendation, separate from the film’s U.S. rating.
Classroom Connections
Use scene evidence to explore the topics above. Pair historical portrayals with reliable sources, literary adaptations with their texts, and animated metaphors with appropriate factual context.
Film details, advisories & classroom context: Criterion credits · Content advisory (spoilers) · Folger complete play