Card 7.
The turn to tragedy, however, is marked by the failure of such accommodations. In the fight scene, the ruined theater, the locus of alternative and creative energy in the film, becomes a stage on which Mercutio delivers his last speech. In this sequence, the consequences of such a stage's inability to distinguish spectacle from reality become evident.
The rear wall has been blown through as if by the large gun of a battleship, and if, in the early scenes this huge opening let in the light of dawn, here it frames an ominous confusion -- both Capulets and Montagues watch Mercutio's death scene from the tattered seats on the audience side of the arch, which faces the city, while for his revelation to the screen audience of the extent of his wound he faces the beach side. His line "a plague on both your houses," is addressed to Capulets and Montagues, now seated as one house, but echoes more widely, perhaps implicating the cinematic audience as well.
What earlier seemed a creative elimination of barriers is now dangerous; there is no fourth wall, no "liminal" place to serve as sanctuary; the point is reinforced by shots of the stage from both sides as the storm (a serendipitously actual storm in Vera Cruz) darkens the sky.