Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream 1999

[poliphilo]

According to this essay I've been reading (by Jay Halio) Kevin Kline was originally slated to play Oberon- but then the director had a brainwave and moved him sideways into the role of Bottom.  The director's brainwave was that the story should be rejigged so it's Bottom who's doing the dreaming. Well, some of this comes across on screen, but it's only half-realised- because if this is Bottom's dream what are Hermia, Helena, Lysander and Demetrius doing in it? There are interpolated- wordless- scenes that establish Bottom as a melancholy, small town poseur with a nagging wife- but the production is too mainstream to attempt the radical editing of the text that would have been necessary to make the concept stick. Kline's Bottom seems sensitive and intelligent and the clowning the script demands of him out of character.   To muddle and confuse things further the action has been explicitly moved to early 20th century Italy- which allows for grand opera on the soundtrack and some happy business with bicycles and gramophone records but means- again- that certain things Shakespeare wrote just don't fit. Did Italian cities in this era have local laws on the books that condemned daughters to death for disobeying their fathers? I don't think so. And why are we crossing our selves and saying a Hail Mary at one moment and invoking Diana the next?

The fairies are fun; they're modelled after the fairies in the paintings of English Victorian artists like Dadd and Noel Stratton. The lovers are all very pretty- Callista Flockhart plays Helena, Christian Bale is Demetrius- but maybe they'd have been funnier if they hadn't been such icons of physical perfection.  Rupert Everett is menacing as Oberon, Michelle Pfeiffer oddly underwhelming as Titania. Roger Rees as Quince projects the decency and dignity of a workingclass autodidact.  Stanley Tucci's Puck-  part Pan, part Mephistopheles--  two little horns and a quizzical air- is the the best thing in the movie.  

Comments

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Much as I'm generally a fan of Michelle Pfeiffer, she really didn't impress in that film. I got the feeling that she was trying for ethereal without realising that there could still be steel underneath. She's certainly capable of it; her role as Catwoman springs to mind, as does the role she played in Dangerous Minds.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think it was a fault of the movie that it cast a whole bunch of actors who aren't used to doing Shakespeare. I suspect Pfeiffer was a little intimidated by the material.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Possibly so. It's a shame she didn't learn from Kline, then - I'm firmly of the opinion that he's not intimidated by _anything_.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Kline's performance is interesting. I think it's misconceived, but it's certainly not lacking in confidence- and a very real pathos.

He's a fine actor. I want to get hold of the DVD of his Hamlet.

[sovay]

The director's brainwave was that the story should be rejigged so it's Bottom who's doing the dreaming.

A few months ago, I watched the end of the 1935 Midsummer Night's Dream on TCM: I came in at the scene where Bottom wakes up from his enchantment and tried to put his dream into words, at which even synesthesia fails him. I can't speak for the rest of the cast, but James Cagney was wonderful. He laughs in amazement at the improbability of his own dreaming until his voice stutters abruptly into a donkey's hee-haw; in a panic he flings himself down in front of the nearest stream and slaps at the water until his own reflection appears, tousled, stubbled, absolutely human, whereupon he rolls to his feet and dusts himself off and strides off through the forest, not lost, recounting to himself all the ways that he will never be able to explain what happened to him, but he'll still perform the hell out of it when he's gotten Peter Quince to write it up. He's indestructible by magic, but not insensible to it; he will not suffer from them, but he will have strange dreams for the rest of his life. It made me wish he'd done more Shakespeare, at least on film. He was astonishing.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You make his performance sound wonderful. I've always liked Cagney- though I don't suppose I've seen him play anything except gangsters.

There are quite a lot of film versions of MSND out there. I've been reading this book that reviews them all. I think the one I most want to see is Peter Hall's 1968 version- with the young Judy Dench as a feral and scantily clad Titania.

[sovay]

You make his performance sound wonderful. I've always liked Cagney- though I don't suppose I've seen him play anything except gangsters.

I saw him first in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), which may be his other best-known non-gangster role; it's the reason I know he can sing. For his sake I want to see the rest of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I think the one I most want to see is Peter Hall's 1968 version- with the young Judy Dench as a feral and scantily clad Titania.

Ian Holm, Helen Mirren, Ian Richardson . . . Definitely! Will you provide a full report?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Whatever the role, Cagney goes at it with enough energy to light a suburb. I particularly love his psychopathic mommy's boy in Raoul Walsh's White Heat.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

I'll go you one - I saw the 1970's Peter Brook Production with Alan Howard as Oberon, Sara Kestelman as Titania, John Kane as Puck, Mary Rutherford as Hermia, Christopher Gable as Lysander, Frances de la Tour as Helena, Ben Kingsley as Demetrius. It remains to this day the single most thrilling theatrical experience of my life. After we came out of the theatre I felt as if I was flying and that effervescence stayed with me for hours.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh wow- that's perhaps the single most celebrated stage production of the last century. Lucky you!

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

It was awesome. I felt as if I were being electrocuted. I've never seen actors - before or since defy gravity the way these did.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wish I could have been there.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

James Cagney started his career as a hoofer and a singer - someone else mentioned "Yankee Doodle Dandy", which IMHO is one of the best roles he ever played. He wanted to do more of that.

MSND is one of my favorites, although I admit to only seeing the Syracuse Stage (the combined professional and student theatre) version of it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

MSND is the first play Ailz is studying for her Open University course. I get the feeling I'm going to know it inside out and back to front before we're finished.