Hayat Bayram Olsa (If Life were a Holiday) – Romeo and Juliet
Hayat Bayram Olsa (If Life were a Holiday) is a film directed by Orhan Aksoy in 1973. It is a loose and domesticised adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Set in a small town in the seaside where again feuding families try to prevent a happy ending for the lovers, now performed by Kadir İnanır and Hülya Koçyiğit. Aksoy’s movie is in the comic mode and presents the fake deaths of the lovers really as fake ones to send with the families the didactic message that lovers should not be separated. Leaving out the deaths of the lovers, the movie, as an allusion to its title, sends the message that every day should be like a holiday in revelry and happiness. The title and the song of the movie is taken from Şenay Yüzbaşıoğlu’s (1947-2013) 1972-3 single hit Hayat Bayram Olsa, whose lyrics hope for a world in peace.
Cast
Hülya Koçyigit
Kadir İnanır
Handan Adalı
Özdemir Aydın
İhsan Bayraktar
Şefik Döğen
Yüksel Gözen
Günay Güner
Itır Gürdemirel
Ayten Kayalı
Hulusi Kentmen
Ahmet Kostarika
Cevat Kurtuluş
Meral Kurtuluş
Haluk Orçun
For more information, visit IMDb and TurkishShakespeares.
Poster featuring Hülya Koçyiğit and Kadir İnanır in Hayat Bayram Olsa (1973), image from SinemaTürk.
Further Reading
Öğütcü, Murat. “Contemporary Turkish Shakespeares: New Breath to Old Lives.” Early Modern Liveness: Mediating Presence in Text, Stage and Screen. Eds. Danielle Rosvally and Donovan Sherman. London: Arden, 2023. 145-169.
Production notes provided by Associate Professor Dr. Murat Öğütcü, Adıyaman University, Turkey.
Hayat Bayram Olsa (If Life were a Holiday) – Romeo and Juliet
Clips
“Turkish Shakespeares”: A Short History of Shakespeare in Turkey up to the Present
Organized by Hacettepe University’s Department of English Language and Literature, Assist. Prof. Dr. Murat Öğütcü from Munzur University gave a talk on April 23, 2021 which surveyed both the history...more
Organized by Hacettepe University’s Department of English Language and Literature, Assist. Prof. Dr. Murat Öğütcü from Munzur University gave a talk on April 23, 2021 which surveyed both the history of Shakespeare in Turkey and how the history of Turkey affected Shakespeare’s reception in drama, education, translation, film, and other disciplines/media.
- At 00:22:47, Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet film is cited as influencing the Turkish film adaptation Murat ile Nazlı (Murat and Nazlı).
- At 00:23:48, Hayat Bayram Olsa (If Life were a Holiday) another film inspired by Romeo and Juliet is briefly discussed.
- At 00:24:33, Intikam Melegi – Kadin Hamlet (The Angel of Vengeance – The Female Hamlet) is discussed.
