Amazon.com: James Cagney and Mickey Rooney romping in a Shakespearian fairyland? This could only be A Midsummer Night's Dream, Warner Bros.' 1935 attempt at classing up the proletarian studio. The legendary German stage director Max Reinhardt had produced the play at the Hollywood Bowl to enchanted, sold-out audiences, and Warners decided to hand Reinhardt the keys to the studio (along with fellow Germans William Dieterle, co-director, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who adapted Mendelssohn's music). Reinhardt created an eye-popping phantasmagoria, a movie laced with sparkling sequins, flying fairies, and moon-kissed forests. As for the words, Reinhardt had a collection of Warners studio players, notably James Cagney as Bottom, whose playing of "Pyramus and Thisby" with Joe E. Brown is perhaps the movie's comic high point. The other actors are decidedly varied, and they tend to be overwhelmed by the production design. Not so Mickey Rooney, whose performance as Puck is a feral, antic act of imagination (he was 14 during filming); picture a boy raised by wolves who somehow memorized Shakespeare. His Puck growls and screams and mocks the drama of the other characters, a little postmodern imp before his time. (Critic David Thomson called this Puck "truly inhuman, one of the cinema's most arresting pieces of magic"). The rest of the movie comes to earth with some regularity, but it's a one-of-a-kind production, and a reminder of the lavish, unreal possibilities within a movie studio. --Robert Horton
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Shakespeare Collides With Ziegfeld's Follies
Now I know why this movie failed in the theaters. First of all - Shakespeare's plays with their Elizabethan English are too hard to understand by semi literate American audiences, especially of the 1930's. ... Read More
Rating: - Enchanting and funny
I was fortunate to be able to see this version of A Midsummernight's Dream on the big screen of the local university's auditorium, many years ago. It was absolutely wonderful. I have seen many other versions ... Read More
Rating: - Good for the time in which it was made.
A Midsummer Night's Dream I laughed at this very funny movie but doubt I will ever watch it again. While I love many of the stars in it it was just a little bit crazy for me.
Rating: - Shakespeare's Phantom Menace?
Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream has it all wrong. While the mechanicals and fairies are both strong, and important, aspects to the play, they ultimately are subordinate to the story of the lovers. Reinhardt ... Read More
Rating: - WARNER'S "PRESTIGE" FOLLY - ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL !
A beautiful print with excellent extras. One could certainly quibble about whether or not it's "Shakespeare" - But who cares, it's fantastically conceived and BEAUTIFULLY photographed. The cast is eclectic, to say ... Read More
- Shakespeare Collides With Ziegfeld's Follies
- Enchanting and funny
- Good for the time in which it was made.
- Shakespeare's Phantom Menace?