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.
— Terry Staples
