Monday Movie: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by Alexander Miller

Every Monday, we’ll highlight a piece of writing from our vaults. This review of A Midsummer Night’s Dream originally ran as a Criterion Prediction.

Reinhardt and Dieterle’s 1935 film is the true embodiment of the term “movie magic.”

Shakespeare’s prose and humor is unexpectedly subordinate to a dazzling show of visual expression, a diverse cast of talent pumped up on some variety of manic energy (a young Rooney is a delightful maniac as Puck) and the sturdy direction of Dieterle and Reinhardt. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a transcendent spectacle. It’s easy to evoke the term “movie magic” with A Midsummer Night’s Dream because the film squeezes out every increment of cinematic grandeur from the material. On a visual level, it’s drunk with whimsical beauty. Dieterle, cinematographer Hal Mohr (whose Oscar is the first and only write-in nomination), and Anton Grot’s art direction are painting with monochrome camerawork’s silvery shades is on par with the movies much-touted special effects. The interplay of visual trickery is perfectly calibrated with the aura of the film and the period in which it was made.

The artifice and splendor are timeless and dazzling. Things as simple as sparkling glitter, synchronized dancing or wire work evoke the film;s dreamy fantasy, reinforcing how A Midsummer Night’s Dream is so inspired. Shakespeare rarely gets such a cinematic makeover.

The aesthetic bravura is so involving that the flowery prose and convoluted story fall off the radar. The bard’s name might be a writing credit but this defies the stagey conventions that accompany his screen adaptations.