When I saw this movie for the first time I knew I'd never seen anything remotely like it, well I was 10 years old after all. But over 40 years later that still holds – this is a unique experience, a revelatory motion picture that entertains, educates and manages to inform you who you are too. Are you a Shakespeare or a movie purist or simply someone who can accept nobody and nothing is perfect and that therefore Shakespeare and movies can possibly be complemented or improved upon by later (agreed, exceptional) talent? I read the play a few years later and was entranced but would still prefer to have this gossamer Max Reinhardt masterpiece with me for company on a desert island instead.
Various young people in Athens fall asleep in wood and various fairies, nymphs and elves come out to play and play the fool with them. It's the relentlessly dreamy and inventive Oscar winning camera work that takes the attention first, but the brave casting of currently popular Warner Brothers stalwarts then takes the breath away. I wish Dewey Robinson could've been given a meatier role! From his er, exuberant performance as Puck I grew up thinking Mickey Rooney must've been a marvellous actor! I always had a soft spot for James Cagney after seeing him in his key role here as Bottom – his tearful realisation of his newly acquired animal magnetism had me transfixed. Olivia de Havilland never looked lovelier when she was being washed by the gleaming arc-moonlight or lying on the gleaming grass. But everyone else was gorgeous too, male, female or otherwise - and I don't care either, I almost wished Dick Powell and Ross Alexander had launched into a croony duet over Hermia! It was Victor Jory's strangest role but he never bettered it. All manner of glimmering glossy shiny tricks were used to promote the astounding ethereal atmosphere, so much so that if I saw the play at the Globe it would probably still look incomplete even if it obviously sounded more authentic.
Just referring to this film version mainly as a stand-alone piece of entertainment and not as in direct comparison to the play, I can hardly fault it. So I would have to summarise that in the main: We shall not see the likes of this again.
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