1935: William Dieterle, Max Reinhardt: This is, like most of these films, something of a mixed bag. The acting ranges from the good to the rather shaky, but it's mostly in the positive column.
Still, it captures with a unique vision something of the magic of the play. Its extraordinary use of textural effects in black and white give it a remarkable visual richness for its age. The cinematography by Hal Mohr won the first and only Oscar ever awarded on a write-in. There are a number of notables in this production, not least among them Victor Jory, Olivia de Havilland, Joe E. Brown, and James Cagney. In addition we have a very young Mickey Rooney — the latter as a somewhat incongruous and boyish Puck, with a disconcertingly insane-sounding laugh.
Perhaps more than any of the other productions, this one is dominated by music. Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who was to go on to become one of the leading composers of film scores until his death in 1957, began his film career here, by adapting Felix Mendelssohn's occasional music. At least one piece of the film (starting at about 100 minutes into the film) is almost pure ballet, combining music and dance in a way that's rather evocative of a black-and-white rendition of some of the more serious parts of Disney's "Fantasia". It suggests not only the wonder of the story, but also the collision of light and dark themes that are implicit in the play. Definitely worth seeing.
1968: Peter Hall: This production is really exceptionally odd. The text of the play is treated fairly conventionally, but the dialogue is occasionally rushed and difficult, less as a result of the way the lines are actually delivered than as a result of their cutting — generally regarded as jerky and poor.
Most striking, perhaps, is the very dated visual aesthetic of avant-garde late-1960s filmmaking — rapidfire changes of perspective, shallow-field shots with blurry backgrounds and an assortment of rather cheap-looking effects that don't really seem to accomplish anything relevant to the story. The sets and costuming, too, bespeak the 1960s more than anything else. The nominal Athens of this play is clearly an English country house of the 18th or 19th century, and the fairies are all portrayed in stages of undress, and in various skin hues of a rather repellent silvery green more evocative of lizards than of the fair folk of English legend.
Nevertheless, the cast is quite noteworthy, and they deliver their lines quite well; the film is worth seeing if only to see the young Diana Rigg, Judy Dench, Ian Holm, Helen Mirren, and David Warner, all of whom went on to achieve considerable prominence in other Shakespeare and non-Shakespeare productions in later years.
1982: Joseph Papp, Emile Ardolino: No longer available commercially on videotape or DVD, this can still be found occasionally in libraries in its VHS form. The film is based on a performance in the park, combining oddly naturalistic outdoor settings with bizarrely mannered delivery, very peculiar costumes, and uneven acting. Joseph Papp was the director of at least one of the BBC Shakespeare plays; the adaptation for the stage is by James LePine, whose long theatrical career includes "Into the Woods", on which he collaborated with Stephen Sondheim.
The lead roles go to some good actors, but the decisions behind the performance produce something that may have played better as live theater than on film. William Hurt as Oberon delivers his lines as if he were acting in a kabuki play, with exaggerated and bizarre tones that give an overall impression of a drug-induced stupefaction that leaves Shakespeare's verse in complete disarray; Michele Shay's Titania, on the other hand, roars so many of her lines that the end result lacks any gradation of intensity. The whole is punctuated with peculiar music and
1981: Elijah Moshinsky: This is a true standout in the BBC Shakespeare collection, and in many ways the best version overall. It features the best production values of any of the BBC productions (low-budget productions from the Hollywood perspective), and its use of music and art direction are occasionally inspired. Momentary vignettes emerge from the film evoking Italian Renaissance paintings.
The fairies — Oberon and Titania in particular — are breathtaking. Peter McEnery's Oberon is powerful and arresting: he has an august yet wild presence that makes him a bit scary and nearly perfect for the role. Helen Mirren, never particularly pretty but impossible to look away from, brings her electric screen presence and immaculate diction to the part of Titania — threatening too, but not without a certain warmth.
The other characters are equally well-cast: Nigel Davenport's Theseus has more gravity and presence than any of the others listed here; Brian Glover as Bottom is possibly not as inspired as Kevin Kline (1999) or Desmond Barrit (1996). The interaction of the four fickle lovers is treated as pure slapstick, but really doesn't suffer from the handling.
1996: Adrian Noble
: Probably the oddest of the lot, and a very mixed success. This is conspicuously stagey, with a lot of clever extra interplay superimposed upon the play. Alex Jennings plays both Theseus and Oberon, and Lindsay Duncan plays both Hippolyta and Titania, thus hammering home the parallelism between the two courts. This is not at odds with the play, surely, but it is rather heavy-handed. A completely new point-of-view character is introduced — a small boy who moves as a kind of idealized spectator from one scene to another, popping up randomly (and, to my taste, irritatingly) here and there, through pieces of furniture and plumbing, and riding bicycles across the moon a la E.T. Perhaps he's dreaming the whole thing (as some have suggested) or perhaps his relationship to things is somewhat different — but it remains unexplained.The art direction is a rather repellent avant-garde melange of clashing images and oversaturated primary colors. The characters seem to be drawn by turns from Victorian post cards and punk rock groups, and the costuming and makeup are bizarre and unattractive, and look surprisingly dated after only eight years.
Though the film has some vocal champions, I find the whole effect more arch and clever than illuminating. For all its oddness, though, it's worth seeing, and certainly at its best moments there are some astonishing visions and remarkable pieces of acting. I should warn, however, that there are a few scenes that are more sexually explicit than many will find comfortable or (certainly) dramatically necessary.
1999: Michael Hoffman:
This most recent entry into the fray received mixed notices from both the Shakespeare community and from the press in general, and it is bound to stir up controversy for some time to come. It inexplicably sets the play around the turn of the century in Italy — a point that it goes out of its way to belabor in a written note at the beginning of the play — and fills it with bicycles, bloomers, and extravagant displays of fin-de-siecle haute cuisine. Nevertheless, it manages to achieve a remarkable visual power, and after a fairly short time, the cultural transposition is more or less acceptable — at no point does it eclipse the story (as happens in some of the other transposed Shakespeare plays like McKellan's Richard III or Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet). At a couple of points the most arbitrary parts of the conceit become arrestingly beautiful and take a rather charming place in the story: there is one completely unanticipated piece involving a phonograph.It is without a doubt the most artistically lavish production, with an august aristocratic villa and a picturesque Italian town for "Athens" and lush woodland settings for the rest. The art direction exhibits a control of imagery that is almost unprecedented, and a receptive viewer will find that it enriches the play considerably, when it is not actively distracting. Titania and Oberon's first confrontation is a cinematic set-piece worthy of study all by itself. Titania's awe-inspiring retinue includes an evocative range of fantastical beings: Janus-headed figures, sphinxes, and — in an inspired touch, an Indian boy who is blue (an otherwise unelaborated reference to the conventional iconography of Krishna).
The best of its performances work well. Kevin Kline is remarkably effective as Bottom, neither as ridiculous nor as contemptible as most, but having a certain melancholy tonality; his troupe of workman-players is realized with an unsurpassed charm and finesse. Stanley Tucci as Puck steals almost every scene he's in.
Not all the casting is equally successful. Rupert Everett presents a nerveless and languid Oberon against Michelle Pfeiffer's far more engaging (but still flatly middle-American) Titania. Some may find Calista Flockhart a bit difficult to believe as Helena; never having seen her as Ally McBeal I don't have that imagery to purge, but persuading myself that she is very tall is a bit of a problem.
Several bold interpretive moves keep the play alive even for the viewer who has seen it one time too many — particularly the novel handling of the Pyramus and Thisbe play-within-a-play, and Bottom's final wistful recollection of his strange dream. They tend to enrich the sense of the whole without really attacking or subverting it aggressively — a delightful contrast to the belligerent and heavy-handed anarchism of Luhrman's Romeo.
There is some restrained depiction of nudity in the film, and implicit sexual activity, but far less gratuitous and offensive in form than what shows up in the Adrian Noble version.
Contents of this page © Copyright 2002, 2004, 2006 by Bruce A. McMenomy.
I invite educators to link to this site for educational purposes. Any reproduction or use for profit constitutes a violation of copyright.