Max Reinhardt's legendary Hollywood Bowl production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream was transferred to the screen by Warner Bros. in 1935. Like most of Shakespeare's comedies, the story contains several seemingly unrelated plotlines, all tied together by a single unifying event, in this instance the impending wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. One story thread concerns the mistaken-identity romances of four young Athenians; another involves a group of "rude mechanicals" who plan to stage a production of "Pyramus and Thisbe" in honor of the wedding; and third plot strand is motivated by the mischievous misbehavior of invisible fairies Oberon, Titania, and Puck. While one of the members of Reinhardt's original stage cast, Olivia De Havilland (Hermia) was retained for the film version, the remainder of the roles went to Warners' ever-reliable stock company. Some of the casting is inspired: James Cagney is brilliant as vainglorious amateur thespian Bottom, while Joe E. Brown is ideal as the reluctant female impersonator Flute. As the four lovers, De Havilland and Jean Muir far outshine the smirking and simpering Dick Powell and Ross Alexander. In the dominion of the fairies, Mickey Rooney is a bit too precious as Puck, but Anita Louise is a lovely Titania and Victor Jory a suitably menacing Oberon (his opening line "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania!" still sends shivers down our spines). Cagney and Brown's fellow "mechanicals" are an odd mixture of the sublime (Frank McHugh) and the just plain silly (Hugh Herbert). While the performances and direction (by Reinhardt and William Dieterle) are uneven, the art direction and special effects (especially the nocturnal dance of the fairies) are breathtakingly beautiful. Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream" incidental music is masterfully orchestrated by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, while the cinematography by Hal Mohr earned the first write-in Academy Award in Hollywood history (Mohr had not been nominated due to hostilities arising from a recent industry strike). Considered a brave failure at the time of its first release, on a purely visual level A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of the more satisfying Shakespearean cinemadaptations of Hollywood's golden age. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Review
Although it is not without flaws, the 1935 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream is by and large a delight. Given the casting, it's inevitable that there would be some grumblings with this Dream; for one thing, there's an awful lot of Hollywood in here and very little English. But, surprisingly, some of those Hollywood names turn in exceptional performances. Top of the list is the thoroughly delightful James Cagney as Bottom, leader of the mechanicals. His enthusiastic, audacious, ultimately captivating turn brings abundant life to the film and makes one forget that, really, this man shouldn't be so at home with Shakespeare. As one of Cagney's cronies, Joe E. Brown is also a surprising pleasure, making up for the misfire of fellow mechanical Hugh Herbert. An extraordinarily young Olivia de Havilland is fetching and entirely winning as Hermia, and Victor Jory is just about perfect as Oberon. On the down side, there's Dick Powell, entirely out of his depth as Lysander. Most controversial is the Puck of Mickey Rooney, which some find charming and appealing and others find busy and annoying; suffice it to say that while he admirably captures the feeling of youthful and irreverent mischief that is at the heart of the character, he does so in a manner that is often forced. Although the direction is a tad uneven, most of the film moves at a nice clip, and the co-directors create a convincing otherworldly feel to the proceedings. They are helped immeasurably by the sensational cinematography of Hal Mohr, which adds a gossamer sheen to even the deepest, darkest part of the forest and is in all ways magical. ~ Craig Butler, Rovi
Shakespeare borrows from the history of ancient Greece for the framework of his play A Midsummer Night's Dream. Using the Greek legend of Athens' king Theseus and the Amazonian woman Hippolyta, the play features Theseus as the Duke of Athens, which places the text historically during the twelfth century B.C., at the time of the Mycenaean rule of Greece.
For More Information Amos, H. D., and A. G. P. Lang. These Were the Greeks. Chester Springs, Pennsylvania: Dufour Editions, 1979. Camden, Carroll. The Elizabethan Woman. Houston: Elsevier, 1952. Garber, Marjorie B. Dream in Shakespeare. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1974. Holzknecht, Karl J. The Backgrounds of Shakespeare's Plays. New York: American Book, 1950. Jones, Norman. The Birth of the Elizabethan Age. Cambridge, England: Blackwell, 1993. Kay, Dennis. Shakespeare, His Life, Work and Era. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1991. Ovid. Metamorphoses. Edited by G. P. Goold. In Ovid in Six Volumes. Vol. 3. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984. Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Schocken, 1975. Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night's Dream. Edited by R. A. Foakes. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Midsummer Night's Dream, A, film versions. It has been filmed more than 30 times, with a wide range of approaches, often derived from a stage production. The best‐known screen adaptation was only the second Shakespeare play to be filmed with sound; other interpretations include speechless, erotic, and postmodern.
In 1934 the Austrian stage producer Max Reinhardt (1873–1943) put on in the Hollywood Bowl a popular and acclaimed Midsummer Night's Dream, which included dancing fairies choreographed to the music Mendelssohn had written for the play in the previous century. When Warner Bros. invited Reinhardt to co‐direct a film of it (USA, 1935), they did not want a straightforward record of the stage production. Nor did Reinhardt. He aimed instead to continue to show respect for Shakespeare's text but use some of Warners' established movie stars—such as James Cagney (Bottom), Dick Powell (Lysander), Joe E. Brown (Flute), and 14‐year‐old Mickey Rooney (Puck)—rather than his stage actors. Equally, Reinhardt wanted to exploit cinema's unlimited space, and the camera's technical possibilities, to create a world of magic and enchantment. A large troupe of gossamer fairies—nearly 1, 000 extras were used, according to the publicity—is shown skipping up to the stars on a spiral pathway of clouds, then floating down on a moonbeam; Bottom's head is transformed into that of a donkey before the viewer's eyes, by means of overlapping dissolves; and some of the forest scenes are shot through a lens partially coated in oil, to enhance perception of the story as a hazy dream. This cinematography won an Academy Award.
About 20 years later the celebrated Czech animator Jiri Trnka started work on a non‐verbal CinemaScope puppet version (Czechoslovakia, 1958). Shakespeare's dialogue was cut out completely, except for the occasional few words of plot explanation. In place of dialogue Trnka relied on visual richness and inventiveness to convey character. Puck, for example, shows his impish humour in the way he transforms himself into little animals from time to time; and Oberon's moods are implied by a succession of costume changes. A twist not found in Shakespeare is that in the final scene, when the artisans are performing their play before Theseus and the court, Puck uses magic to transform their acting from silly to sublime for a few brief moments.
In the 1980s came a radical reworking (UK/Spain, 1984) which used more of Shakespeare's text than Trnka had done, but not by much. Directed by Celestino Coronado, and based on a well‐travelled stage production, it posits the dream as being that of Puck in a lascivious and voyeuristic mood. The only bits of text used are those which Puck as satyr likes, and they are enhanced for him by the addition of sex, mime, and transvestism. No longer are the fleeing lovers, Demetrius and Helena, separated during their night in the forest—they lie together. Next morning, when he wakes with eyes befuddled by Puck's magic, the first person Demetrius sees and fancies is not Helena, but his rival Lysander. However Hermia, when she opens her eyes, does fall for Helena. They all make love, then change partners. In other parts of the wood Bottom, instead of acquiring an ass's head, turns into a horned Beast who excites and satisfies Titania (played by a man); and Oberon carries off the changeling boy—cause of his problems with Titania—for private pleasures.
A Royal Shakespeare Company production transferred to film (UK, 1996) similarly interprets it as one particular person's dream. In this case it is a sleeping boy, in ancient Athens, who becomes a silent onlooker. The production thus reaches out to touch and join earlier other‐land excursions such as The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. There are also, in the visuals, invocations of Beatrix Potter, Arthur Rackham, E.T., and Mary Poppins. This child's‐eye perception is extended by a presentation of the enchanted Athenian wood as a virtual world generated by computer. The dreaming boy is also, like Puck in the 1984 version, interested in the sexual potential of the comings and goings in the wood, but not so deeply.
Perhaps because of its fairy‐tale elements, A Midsummer Night's Dream seems to be the most versatile and adaptable of all Shakespeare's plays.
Many of the actors in this version had never performed Shakespeare before and never would do so again, notably Cagney and Brown, who were nevertheless highly acclaimed for their performances. All critics agreed that Dick Powell was miscast as Lysander,[citation needed] and Powell himself concurred with the critics' verdict.[citation needed]
Olivia de Havilland originally auditioned for the role of Puck in Reinhardt's stage production of the play at the Hollywood Bowl.[citation needed] Although the cast of the stage play was mostly replaced by Warner Brothers contract players, de Havilland and Mickey Rooney were chosen to reprise their original roles.
Avant-garde director Kenneth Anger claimed in his book Hollywood Babylon II to have played the changeling prince in this film when he was a child, but in fact the role was played by child star Sheila Brown.[citation needed]
Production notes
Director Max Reinhardt did not speak English at the time of this film. He gave orders to the actors and crew in German with William Dieterle acting as his interpreter. The film was banned in Nazi Germany because of the Jewish backgrounds of Reinhardt and composer Felix Mendelssohn.
The shooting schedule had to be rearranged after Mickey Rooney broke his leg while skiing. According to Rooney's memoirs, Jack Warner was furious and threatened to kill him and then break his other leg.
Hal Mohr was not nominated for his work on the movie; he won the Oscar thanks to a grass-roots write-in campaign. It was Mohr who decided that the trees should be sprayed with orange paint, giving them the eerie glow which added to the "fairyland" effect in the film. The next year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences declared that it would no longer accept write-in votes for the awards.[citation needed]
Rejections
At the time, cinemas entered into a contract to show the film, but had the right to pull out within a specified period of time. Cancellations usually ran between 20 and 50. The film established a new record with 2,971 cancellations. Booking agents had failed to correctly identify the film.[4]
Run times
The film was first released at 132 minutes, but was edited to 117 minutes for its general release run. The full 132 minute version was not seen again until it turned up on cable television in 1994. The film was then re-issued at its full length on VHS (its first video release was of the edited version). Later showings on Turner Classic Movies have restored the film's pre-credits Overture, and its Exit Music, neither of which had been heard since its 1935 road show presentations. In August, 2007, it was released on DVD for the first time, both individually and as part of a box set known as "The Shakespeare Collection."
References
^ H. Mark Glancy, “MGM Film Grosses, 1924-1948: The Eddie Mannix Ledger,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television , 12, no. 2 (1992), pp. 127-43
^ H. Mark Glancy, “MGM Film Grosses, 1924-1948: The Eddie Mannix Ledger,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television , 12, no. 2 (1992), pp. 127-43
^Brown, Gene (1995). Movie Time: A Chronology of Hollywood and the Movie Industry from its Beginnings to the Present. New York: MacMillan. p. 125. ISBN0-02-86042906.
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