Synopsis: Two couples and a troupe of actors have an encounter with some mischievous fairies in the forest.
Stars: James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, Olivia de Havilland, Jean Muir, Joe E. Brown, Dick Powell, Ross Alexander, Anita Louise, Victor Jory, Ian Hunter
Directors: William Dieterle, Max Reinhardt
Rated: NR
Running Length: 143 minutes
Movie Review in Brief: Warner Bros.’ 1935 Shakespeare spectacle looks astonishing in Warner Archive’s new restoration, with Scott MacQueen’s commentary and a stack of period shorts alongside it. Shelf Worthy without hesitation.
Buy the film here
A Midsummer Night's Dream Blu-ray Review: Warner Bros. Builds a Forest
Warner Bros. spent a fortune in 1935 on a Shakespeare picture nobody asked for, and audiences stayed home. A Midsummer Night’s Dream flopped, received mixed reviews, and then spent the ninety years becoming the film people cite when they argue the Bard can survive Hollywood. My review of the new Blu-Ray of A Midsummer Night’s Dream covers Warner Archive’s stunning new restoration, which finally lets you see what all that money bought the famed studio.
First, let’s talk about how this Dream began…
Max Reinhardt had just fled Europe, arriving with one of the great stage careers behind him. His Hollywood Bowl staging of the play had been a hit the year before. Warner handed him a studio, a co-director in William Dieterle, and two soundstages to build an enchanted forest. Charles Kenyon and Mary C. McCall Jr. adapted. Erich Wolfgang Korngold re-orchestrated Mendelssohn, and Bronislava Nijinska of the Ballets Russes staged the fairy ballets.
What Fools these Mortals Be
If you’ve taken high school English, you should remember the plot.
Four couples, all of them stuck. Hermia (Olivia de Havilland, Airport ’77) loves Lysander (Dick Powell, 42nd Street). Her father prefers Demetrius (Ross Alexander), who is being chased by Helena (Jean Muir). Oberon (Victor Jory) and Titania (Anita Louise) are feuding over a changeling boy, and Theseus (Ian Hunter) expects the conquered Hippolyta (Verree Teasdale) to marry him about it. They all wind up in the same forest. A flower’s nectar and a mischievous Puck (Mickey Rooney, National Velvet) scramble the rest.
If the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare’s most accessible play scares you off, don’t let it. The plot is slight and the staging so bright that following it takes no effort. James Cagney (White Heat) plays Bottom, the weaver whose head Puck mischievously swaps for a donkey’s. He’s the best thing here. Cagney plays Bottom, a would-be thespian rehearsing with his rag-tag- troupe in the forest, like a man who has never once suspected he might be the joke. De Havilland was making her screen debut, and you’d never guess it. Jory speaks the verse better than anyone on screen, with Hunter close behind.
The company around him is having just as much fun. Rooney’s Puck is pure rambunctious fun, shrieking and cartwheeling through the woods like a kid who found the sugar bowl. Joe E. Brown (Some Like It Hot) plays most of Flute in drag and commits without a flicker of embarrassment. Hugh Herbert chortles his way through Snout. Powell takes a while to find the rhythm of the verse, then settles in after the intermission. Reinhardt’s fairy ballets are the film’s grand indulgence, and while they may stretch on ever so slightly long, surrendering to them is the whole point of the fantasy.
The compensation is Hal Mohr‘s camerawork, which turns the forest into an iridescent storybook. Cobwebs spun into a wedding veil. Fairies streaming through the dark. Light doing things it should not be able to do on a soundstage without special effects that hadn’t been invented yet. Mohr won the Oscar in the final year of write-in eligibility and remains the only person to take the award without being nominated. One look at this gossamer forest explains how his write-in win happened.
Every Shade of Moonlight
The original 1.37:1 ratio is presented faithfully in a 1080p AVC transfer. In truth, the black-and-white photography is the real reason collectors will want to buy this disc. Whites glow without bleeding into the darkness, blacks are deep and clear, and the image shifts between sharply defined and deliberately soft as the night demands. The stately scenes in court are sharp and regimented, while the forest looks like a dream somebody remembered just after they woke up. Warner Archive’s grayscale representation is why black-and-white looks so dang good in high definition.
The disc is presented in the original roadshow version, and it’s a lovely experience. There are two acts, the first runs about 76 minutes, plus overture, intermission, and exit music. All in all, 35 chapter stops take you through the night. Audio is DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio mono, and it sounds exceptionally clear for dialogue recorded in 1935. The real beneficiary is Korngold’s Mendelssohn, which sounds wonderful and nicely lifts the ballets.
Rummaging Through the Warner Attic
I’ve listened to a lot of commentaries in my day but I’m not sure I’ve listened to one that is reading from a pre-written script before. So it was a new experience to hear Scott MacQueen’s insightful audio track that moves briskly through the production’s origins, the initial reviews it received, background infor on the stars, and even the bitter memos that went back and forth within the filmmakers. It’s the most significant extra here and it’s serious about the film without coming off as snobby.
The rest is your typical sampler from the Warner vault. The Hollywood premiere and production history is covered in “A Dream Comes True” (7:30, SD) in a newsreel like format. A screen test (8:38, SD) finds de Havilland auditioning for Danton, an ambitious French Revolution biographical film planned by director Reinhardt that never got made. Knowing she was four years away from her Oscar-nominated role in Gone With the Wind,, and it’s wonderful to catch her this early in her screen career. As usual, Warner Archive shoehorns in something strange, like “Shake, Mr. Shakespeare” (20:11, SD), a musical short about a producer dreaming up Shakespearean advice.
“Warner Bros. Studio Cafe” (1:51, SD) is a commissary promo with Pat O’Brien congratulating Brown. “Presenting” collects six trailers in which cast members introduce the film to theater audiences. You get Dick Powell (1:31), Anita Louise (1:19), Jean Muir (0:58), Frank McHugh (1:25), Ian Hunter (1:06), and Olivia de Havilland (1:04). The theatrical trailer (2:12, SD) closes it out.
Give Me Your Hands, If We Be Friends
I’ve seen this play more times than I can count, on stage and screen. This is still one of the two or three best versions anyone has managed. Whatever excesses it has are the excesses of a studio swinging for something enormous. And remember, this was at a time when people dressed up to go to the movies. The 143 minutes fly, and the performances radiate off the screen almost 100 years after they were captured.
With all the extras, the performances, and the ballets, my review of this new Blu-Ray of A Midsummer Night’s Dream comes down to a restoration that makes the 1935 production look like it was finished last year.
Shelf Worthy. Obviously. Warner Archive took a picture the studio once treated as an expensive embarrassment, dusted it off, and now it looks like one of their crown jewel classics it should have been all along. Put it on some summer night (while you can!), let the fairies fly, and watch the studio system attempt art without a net.
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