People were doing irrational things to get ino Romeo and Juliet when Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn danced it in America two years ago. Now that the same Royal Ballet production has been made into a film, the tickets are easier to come by but no less precious.

Before Nureyev defected to England, the Royal Ballet's lead was David Blair, and in one scene the two men dance together. The comparison is as illumiinating as it is cruel. Because he plays Mercutio, poor Blair has to keep smiling throughout. Not that Blair is bad. He dances with great control if a little stiffly. Then Nureyev comes along, with calves like artillery shells, and he is about as stiff as a bursting rocket. He doesn't have to leap to be amazing, he just has to move.

But if Nureyev is always the star, he is not always the star-crossed lover. Fonteyn, on the other hand, concentrates on playing a part as well as on dancing. Keeping her arms to her side, she makes Juliet a little gawky and consequently very poignant. She has the face of a women of forty, but the moment she moves she becomes fourteen.

Perhaps the best thing about this production is that it isn't just a foil for two virtuosi. Kenneth Macmillan's choreography, a mixture of classical ballet and freestyle, tells a story, not an easy thing to do in the case of Romeo and Juliet. It is hard for mutes to establish the family relationships involved, and when a letter is delivered they can indicate that it contains bad or good news but not what news. Nevertheless, Macmillan makes the plot clear and moving. When the stage is full for the crowd scenes, he coordinates the whole corps de ballet with incredible skill. The close-ups require the whole company to mime, and they do so convincingly. Macmillan passes the toughest test in his delicate handling of the tomb scene. Here the dying are trying to make love to the dead, potentially a macabre situation without the saving grace of the Bard's poetry.

Some critics have complained that the camera has crippled this ballet with its frequent close-ups. For years, however, the best-equipped balletomanes have been training their opera-glasses on ballet stars to gain precisely the close-up effect. So what harm to let the camera lens do the work of opera glasses?

The camerawork is sometimes a bit fuzzy but nearly always unobtrusive. It captures the rich staginess of classical ballet, with all its shaky flats and thickly made-up faces. It even preserves Nureyev's finesse at milking curtain calls.

Add to all this a brilliant, realistic job of Renais sance costuming and the warm, melodic score by Prokofieff. This film is more than just a record to be catalogued with a sigh of relief that a famous stage production has been cinematically picked. It gives Romeo and Juliet intimacy and immediacy as well as permanance.