A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935 film)

• 1. Introduction

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  A Midsummer Night's Dream, Warner Bros.' 1935 adaptation of Shakespeare's comedy, set a record on release that no studio would want. Theaters had contracted to screen the film, then pulled out in unprecedented numbers: 2,971 cancellations, far beyond the usual range of 20 to 50. Booking agents had simply failed to identify what the film was. The production behind those numbers was one of the most elaborate Warner Bros. had ever attempted. It brought together James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, Dick Powell, Olivia de Havilland, and Joe E. Brown. They worked under Max Reinhardt and his co-director William Dieterle. Both men had come to America as refugees from the imminent Nazi takeover of Austria. The film opened on the 9th of October, 1935, simultaneously in London, New York, Sydney, and Vienna. The opening drew mixed notices, and the film lost money. The reputation it has now took the better part of a century to build.

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• 2. A Refugee's Vision

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  Max Reinhardt had spent his career trying to dissolve the line between performer and audience. He described his work as 'inspired by the example of social participation in the ancient Greek and Medieval theatres,' and his aim was 'to bridge the separation between actors and audiences.' In the German-speaking world, that vision had made him legendary.

  In 1934, he staged A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Hollywood Bowl. The Los Angeles Times described the operation as running 'on the scale of a small military operation.' More than 400 artists were involved: 18 principals, around 60 dancers, and several hundred extras. The Bowl's band shell was dismantled and placed in storage. A giant stage was built, covered with green sod and heavy foliage. Oak trees were shipped in from Calabasas to complete the scene. Costumes were designed by Max Rée. The Bowl's ballet sequences were choreographed by Theodore Kosloff and Nini Theilade.

  The film's screenplay, by Charles Kenyon and Mary C. McCall Jr., was adapted directly from the Bowl staging. Some of the original cast would make the journey from stage to soundstage, most notably Olivia de Havilland and Mickey Rooney.

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• 3. Casting by Contract

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  Olivia de Havilland had come to the Hollywood Bowl production as an understudy for Gloria Stuart. Stuart dropped out before opening night due to illness, and de Havilland stepped in as Hermia. When Warner Bros. cast the film, she was invited to play the role again. A Midsummer Night's Dream became her motion picture debut.

  Most of the rest of the cast arrived with no Shakespeare experience. James Cagney and Joe E. Brown had never performed Shakespeare and would not do so again; both were nonetheless highly acclaimed for their performances. Dick Powell, cast as Lysander, was a different matter entirely. Film critic Richard Watts Jr. wrote that Warner Bros. had 'weakened' enough to cast someone 'whose performance is not much short of fatal.' He was referring to Powell, then known primarily as a Hollywood crooner. Powell reportedly asked to be taken off the film. The studio refused.

  Kenneth Anger, the avant-garde director, claimed in his book Hollywood Babylon II that he had played the changeling prince in this film as a child. The role was actually played by a child actress named Sheila Brown. Mickey Rooney's troubles with the production, meanwhile, had already begun before filming was complete.

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• 4. The Toboggan Accident

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  Max Reinhardt did not speak English at the time of the film's production. His orders to cast and crew came in Austrian German, while William Dieterle, his longtime collaborator, interpreted. Every direction had to pass through a second pair of hands before an actor could respond.

  Mickey Rooney broke his leg while tobogganing at Big Pines, California. The production was too expensive to delay, so the company worked around the injury. Rooney's running and elfin sequences were handed to a stand-in named George Breakston. Foliage was used to hide Rooney's broken leg in other scenes, along with holes in the floor to position him correctly. According to Rooney's own memoirs, Jack L. Warner was furious. Warner had said, Rooney wrote, that he wanted to kill Rooney, bring him back to life, and then break his other leg. The world they were building on screen demanded a different kind of ingenuity: cellophane.

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• 5. Seven Hundred Thousand Yards

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  Seven hundred thousand yards of cellophane went into the making of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1935, cellophane was a relatively new material. The film deployed it in large amounts to create the illusion of a fairy world on screen.

  Felix Mendelssohn's score ran through the entire film, though Erich Wolfgang Korngold re-orchestrated it extensively. Korngold drew on more than just Mendelssohn's incidental music from 1843. He also incorporated passages from the Symphony No. 3, known as the Scottish, and Symphony No. 4, known as the Italian. Selections from Songs without Words were used as well.

  Nini Theilade, who had co-choreographed the ballet sequences at the Hollywood Bowl, appeared in the film itself as a performer. She played a fairy in Titania's entourage. The film's ballet choreography went instead to Bronislava Nijinska, a veteran of the Ballets Russes. The music Korngold fashioned from those pieces would soon draw the attention of the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda. The reasons had nothing to do with its quality.

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• 6. Degenerate Art

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  Joseph Goebbels's Ministry of Propaganda banned A Midsummer Night's Dream from German cinemas. Goebbels believed the film's visual style drew heavily on German expressionist cinema, which he labeled as degenerate art. That charge was secondary to a more personal one. The Jewish ancestry of director Max Reinhardt provided what Goebbels considered the decisive reason for the ban. The work of Felix Mendelssohn and Erich Wolfgang Korngold had already been prohibited on the same grounds. It had been declared degenerate music before the film even reached German audiences.

  The Variety reviewer called it 'a commendable effort,' praising the fantasy sequences, the ballet, and the settings as 'convincing and illusion compelling.' The women in the cast were singled out as doing more with their lines than the men. Victor Jory received particular praise for his 'clear, distinct diction' as Oberon. The same review was blunt about Dick Powell's miscasting. Rooney's Puck was described as 'so intent on being cute that he becomes almost annoying.'

  Andre Sennwald, writing for The New York Times, called the film 'no masterpiece' but 'a brave, beautiful and interesting effort.' He described 'magical moments when it all comes alive.' He praised Korngold's score as 'magnificent' and found Dieterle's direction 'enormously skillful.' Sennwald singled out Joe E. Brown, calling his performance 'the best performance in the show,' and found Hugh Herbert and Frank McHugh 'uproarious.' He called Mickey Rooney's Puck 'remarkable,' one of the major delights of the work. James Cagney, however, he found 'too dynamic' for the 'dullard' Bottom, and he questioned whether Victor Jory's 'earnest sobriety' suited the 'antic' fairy king.

  Graham Greene, writing for The Spectator in 1935, praised the acting as 'fresh and vivid.' He attributed that quality to the cast's lack of 'proper Shakespearian diction and bearing.' Greene confessed to enjoying the film, speculating that his lack of affection for the original play might explain why. He was nonetheless critical of Reinhardt's direction, writing that Reinhardt seemed 'uncertain of his new medium.'

  Today, Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream holds a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on eight reviews. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, meanwhile, had its own verdict to offer.

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• 7. The Write-In Oscar

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  Hal Mohr was not among the nominees when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its ballot for Best Cinematography. He won anyway. A grass-roots write-in campaign put enough ballots behind Mohr's name to give him the Oscar over the officially nominated candidates.

  Mohr had made one specific creative decision that shaped the film's look. He decided that the forest trees should be sprayed with orange paint. That choice produced the eerie glow that gave the film's fairy world its distinctive quality on screen.

  The following year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences declared it would no longer accept write-in votes for any award. The rules that govern Oscar voting today were, in part, changed by what happened on the night Mohr took home his award. No write-in wins would be possible from that point on.

  Ralph Dawson won the film's second Academy Award, for Best Film Editing. Henry Blanke, the film's producer, received a Best Picture nomination. Sherry Shourds was nominated for Best Assistant Director.

  A Midsummer Night's Dream was first released at 133 minutes, then trimmed to 118 minutes for its general run. The full 133-minute version was not seen again until 1994, when cable television broadcast it. In August 2007, the film reached DVD for the first time. It appeared both as a standalone release and as part of a box set called The Shakespeare Collection.

  Lucile Hadžihalilović cited A Midsummer Night's Dream as a major influence on her 2025 film The Ice Tower. She pointed to its artwork, scenery, costumes, and lighting; the film's costumes also inspired the dress worn by the Snow Queen in The Ice Tower. In September 2004, Ken Ludwig's play Shakespeare in Hollywood had its world premiere at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Ludwig had been commissioned to write it by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The play transported Oberon and Puck to 1934 Hollywood, casting them into the troubled making of the Warner Bros. film. It won the Helen Hayes Award for Best New Play. The play's cast of historical characters included Jack Warner, Max Reinhardt, Will Hays, Joe E. Brown, and Jimmy Cagney. Those names from 1935 had, it turned out, a life beyond the original film.

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