Family Depiction in Romeo and Juliet

            Throughout the play "Romeo and Juliet," there is an obvious power struggle between the Capulets and the Montagues. Although the audience is never told why the two families are feuding, Shakespeare makes us aware from the beginning that there is an intense hatred between the families.
             Romeo, belonging to the Montagues, and Juliet, a Capulet, have an accidental run in at a party that leads to the two young characters falling in love. This, of course, is doomed from the very beginning. The forbidden love quickly begins a series of domino events involving betrayal, lies, poison, and eventually ends in suicide. Both movies show a definite separation between the two families by use of costumes, props, and settings. By distinguishing the two families as separate and feuding sides, the directors can force the viewers to view them as such. This helps with the play's suspense and allows us as viewers to understand more in depth the true hate the two families feel for each other. .
             In Franco Zeffirelli's version of the play, Romeo and Juliet (1968), we are shown a distinct separation between two families by putting them in different colors. He dresses the Capulets in orange, red and yellow colored clothing, and the Montagues in a dark blues, black, and grays. This depiction of the colors clearly segregates the families and allows us to clearly associate the characters to the side they are fighting for. The two families stuck only to their colors, giving the viewer no way to misinterpret whether they were a Capulet or a Montague. This aspect was especially apparent during the fight scenes, where it was color against color, not individual person against person. This allowed the fights to be less confusing for the audience to follow along with throughout each one. Other than the families being in different colored costumes, there are no other costume differences that Zeffirelli shows in his version of the play that would separate the two.