A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)
Usually, you would refer to the year of a movie (like the 1935 version or the 1999 version in these cases), but when a certain adaptation is extraordinarily good, you would name the director. This one is Reinhardt’s version of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, and much deservedly so.
Compared to the 1999 version, I can’t believe how much better the directing is. How so much better! A Midsummer Night’s Dream is so full of potential, making the difference so amazingly striking. It hasn’t happen very often that I have seen in different mise en scènes of the same story (I’ve seen “Letter from an Unknown Woman”, “Alice in Wonderland” , and “The Magic Flute” in two opera houses), and I find it fascinating to make comparisons.
In this case, there is not enough praise I can give to the directing of adaptation. There are so many scenes that are made even much funnier by the way Reinhardt has set them into place. I loved the scenes where the four lovers ran after each other through the woods; I loved the way Puck imitated them; and the very best scenes were the ones when the four of them confronted each other. With good, but not outstanding actors, these scenes actually made me come late to class. You can’t just stop watching a movie in the middle of such a funny fight, right? Acting, cinematography, pace – it was just too perfect and so much better than the mud .
One character I didn’t actually like as much was Puck. His acting was wonderful (despite the slightly was unpleasant laughters), and was immensely funny. But I’m not so sure if I like this slightly evil instead of just playful Puck. I kind of liked the calm dignity of the 1999 Puck much more.
Luckily it’s not like the more modern version had no redeeming qualities. In general, I would say that the combination of Kevin Kline, Michelle Pfeiffer and Calista Flockhart (not to forget that Oberon and Puck was brilliant too) is superior to the cast of Reinhardt’s film. In general, none of the actors are bad at all, all of them are steady (compared to the horrible Demetrius, Hermia and Lysander in the 1999 version). Plus there is James Cagney! And Osgood! (Joe E. Brown that is… as Flute he’s so brilliant!) With these astonishingly fun and energetic actors playing him, I am still wishing Bottom had a larger role.
The one thing I did not quite understand in the film are the… singing and dancing scenes? Granted, they are mostly beautiful and the dancing scenes are very well executed. And as much as I understand that this is also an opera adaptation to some degree, I didn’t quite see the need of showing seemingly pointless dancing scenes. At first, I found them to be very pretty, especially in comparison to the awkward mask given to the fairies in the 1999 version, and I am quite enamored with Mendelssohn’s music (especially the overture!), but getting rid of the the singing and dancing scenes would have cut the 20 minutes that this film exceeds the standard 2 hours.
While “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” does not garner as much attention as “Alice in Wonderland” did (not like you can compare them), I feel like I would happily pass at the other adaptations of the play. Next time, I want to see the play “in person”.