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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
1935
DIRECTED BY MAX REINHARDT
8:00 PM WARNER GRAND THEATER
(133 minutes.) Producer: Max Reinhardt.
Writer: William Shakespeare; “arranged for the screen” by Charles
Kenyon and Mary C. McCall, jr.: Directors: Max Reinhardt and William
Dieterle. Cinematographer: Hal Mohr. Special Photographic Effects: Fred
Jackman, Byron Haskin, Hans Koenkamp. Music: Felix Mendelssohn,
arranged by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Ballets staged by Bronislawa
Nijinska and Nina Theilade. Costumes: Max Ree. Starring: James Cagney,
Mickey Rooney, Olivia deHaviland, Victor Jory, Anita Louise, Nina
Theilade, Joe E. Brown and (uncredited) Kenneth Anger as the Changeling
Prince.
Sat, Sep 24, 8:00pm Showing with the feature is a short made by the studio: The Making of a Midsummer Night’s Dream (10 mins.)
Max Reinhardt (1873 -- 1943) was in his day renowned throughout Europe
and America as a fiery and imaginative theater director. All the great
German expressionists (with the exception of Fritz Lang) were trained
and influenced by him: F.W. Murnau, Ernst Lubitsch, Otto Preminger,
and, not least, William Dieterle (1893 -- 1972), who began his career
as an actor for Reinhardt, only to become a director himself in the
Hollywood of the ‘20s. After Reinhardt fled Hitler’s Germany, Dieterle
invited him to collaborate on this joyous production.
For all that it uses the square screen ratio traditional to the 1930s, this Midsummer
is at home in our Widescreen Fest because every corner of every frame
is so fully and luminously brought to life. Shakespeare’s story is
bouyant and busy. The Duke of Athens (Ian Hunter) wishes to stage a
great theatrical banquet at his impending marriage to the Amazon Queen
(Verree Teasdale). A gang of tradesman led by Bottom the Weaver (James
Cagney, perfect) hope to win the Duke’s favor with a play, and rehearse
in the forest nearby. A quartet of mismatched, quarreling lovers
(Olivia DeHavilland, Dick Powell, Ross Alexander, Jean Muir) rush
headlong into the same wilderness, not realizing (as neither Bottom nor
his crew do) that these woods are enchanted. All come to the attention
of Oberon (Victor Jory), King of the Night, and his goblin helper Puck
(Mickey Rooney). Oberon is feuding with the Queen of the Faeries,
Titania (Anita Louise), so Puck casts a two-way spell which makes her
fall madly in love with Bottom, who is cursed just as mischievously
with the head of a mule. A second love spell wreaks equally uproarious
havoc among the quartet of lovers.
Reinhardt and Dieterle
stage these romps and turnabouts with an infectious high-energy. If in
410 years there has ever been a better Puck than Mickey Rooney, he or
she is impossible to imagine -- the lawless little sprite steals the
film, gushing and giggling lines that don’t sound written but crowed,
for the first time ever, though they are precisely true to every
gorgeous syllable of Shakespeare. Victor Jory is a marvel as Oberon,
and so is his costume -- dark branches spreading upward from his crown.
Indeed, the outfits designed by Max Ree “perform” throughout, in
splendid assistance to the actors: Note that serpentine decolette worn
by the Amazon Queen in the first scenes, and those sexily beaded
auroras, too sheer to be called “gowns” or even “garments,” worn by
Titania and her league of faeries. Of these, Nina Thelaide, the Danish
ballerina who plays the lead faerie, has a breathtaking grace. When she
departs with the dawn, she performs a riveting solo which diminishes to
a pas de deux between her left and right hands.
Cinematographer Hal Mohr earned his Oscar the hard way. When it
appeared that Reinhardt’s magnificent forest couldn’t be lit or filmed
properly amid the technical limits of 1935, Mohr devised a solution
using aluminum paint, veils of theatrical cobweb and every tiny
glittering object he and his crew could lay their hands on. Reinhardt’s
conception became so blazingly visible that Mohr -- who for some
perverse reason was not nominated -- later won the Academy Award for
cinematography purely by a write-in vote.
