A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)

In tribute to Mickey Rooney, who died a week or so ago, I'll be looking at a few of his films. There are a lot of them--he had a career that lasted almost ninety years, and he made films in ten straight decades, which will be hard to top. He was the last living person who starred in silent films--he did so playing a character called Mickey McGuire (he kept the Mickey--his real name was Joseph Yule).

In 1935, when he was about 14, he played the role of Puck in Max Reinhardt's production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which also starred such luminaries as James Cagney and  Olivia de Havilland (it was her film debut, and she is the last remaining cast member still alive).

Reinhardt was a German theater director who staged the play at the Hollywood Bowl, and it was such a success that it was made into a film. Reinhardt spoke no English, so William Dieterle was co-director, but it was Reinhardt's vision, and though the special effects are crude, it still retains its magic almost eighty years later.

The play is presented straight, without moving it into a different time and place. To celebrate his wedding to Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, Duke Theseus has called for a revel. A bunch of working men get together to put on a play of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. Young lovers, Lysander (Dick Powell) and Hermia (de Havilland) run off into the woods because her father wants her to marry Demetrius (Ron Alexander). They are pursued by Demetrius and Helena (Jean Muir), who is hopelessly in love with Demetrius.

They are in the magic part of the forest, the fairies' realm. The king of the fairies, Oberon (Victor Jory), is mad at his queen, Titania (Anita Louise), because she has stolen his changeling. He gets revenge on her by anointing her eyes with a liquid that will make her fall in love with the first creature she sees. This turns out to be Cagney, as Bottom, one of the actors. To make matters worse, Puck, an impudent, fun-loving sprite, has given Cagney the head of a jackass.

The fairies also play havoc with the Athenian lovers, as magic makes both men in love with Helena. All is fixed, though, and the play ends with the workers version of Pyramus and Thisbe, which is comically inept.

It's hard to screw up this play, because the comedy is so rich, and this is a fine production. As I said, it plays it straight, so we get fairies that look like fairies (though Oberon's minions are dressed like bats). Many of the cast had never done Shakespeare before or after, such as Cagney and comedian Joe E. Brown (as Flute), but they are excellent, as is Rooney, is so joyous and uninhibited in the part. I also thought Jory gave Oberon a hint of something sinister that isn't often seen.

The film was shot by Hal Mohr, who won an Oscar (a write-in winner, the last the Academy allowed), and while it is unsophisticated by today's standards, the scenes of the fairies, which are shot through shimmering filters, work wonderfully. Occasionally there is stuff that could have been cut, such as a ballet sequence, but Reinhardt and his cast milk the laughs. I actually laughed out loud and some of it, mostly the work of Cagney and Brown. The film also uses Felix Mendelssohn's orchestral music, written for the play, one of my favorite classical pieces.