Romeo And Juliet

[abcinyvr]

Who performs "What is a Youth"?

The soundtrack (my version on vinyl) shows the vocals on 'What Is A Youth' were by Glen Weston.

As for the set direction, seeing as much of the film was made on location in Italy rather than on a lot of sets, then they may have taken that into consideration. I suppose that the same could be said for The Lion In Winter. Neither of them would have stood a chance up against those wonderful sets from Oliver!

Oliver is not a 'better' film than The Lion In Winter but I love it and understand why it won. My choice - and a difficult one in this year - would be R&J.

[HarryGoldfarb]

Who performs "What is a Youth"?

Beutiful song indeed, but actually the whole soundtrack is amazing... it feels so organic, the "few-instrements-orchestration" is mesmerizing and it fits perfectly the film... a shame for the Academy.

The film should have also been nominated for Art Direction... how come it didn't grab a nod in that category is a mistery to me.

The film is in my list of All Time Favorites, pretty high actually. Even though I personally think Oliver! robbed The Lion in Winter for best picture, my personal favorite from the nominees (the one I injoyed the most, not necessarily "The Best Film of the Year") is Zefirelli's film.

[Mister Tee]

It's worth noting that the now widely-familiar theme didn't become an airplay hit until some time after Oscar season. Not that the music branch shouldn't have had enough on the ball to discover it without prompting, but its omission wasn't quite as shocking in February '69 as it would have been by midsummer.

[Nik]

WHOA. That score wasn't nominated? Really?? I never realized that, seriously I thought for sure it would be. My god, this branch had as much bad taste then as they do now. Strike em. Strike the whole category now, they're utterly useless.

[Big Magilla]

The score certainly should have been nominated. Perhaps the music branch wasn't feeling kindly to Itlaian composers that year, or maybe they were jealous of the soundtrack's enormous success.

The song sung in the film was overshadowed by the time of the Oscar nominations by A Time for Us, the film's main theme with lyrics added, which would almost certainly have been a nominee and possible winner had it been sung on the film's soundtrack.

The custom of adding lyrics to a film's theme music after the film was released had been in practice for decades - Laura, To Each His Own and Somewhere My Love (Lara's Theme) from Doctor Zhivago are other famous examples of songs that would certainly have been Oscar nominated had they been heard on their film's original soundtrack.

[abcinyvr]

I recently rented Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo And Juliet, after not having seen it for a decade or so. It is such an beautiful film.

I looked up in my Oscar book and was surprised to see that neither Nina Rota's score nor the ballad, 'What Is A Youth', was nominated. Is there any specific reason for this?