Shakespeare Collection (DVD)

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Theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt and his co-director William Dieterle ("Madame DuBarry," "The Story of Louis Pasteur," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," "The Devil and Daniel Webster") tried to cover every base, and the movie comes off more like a Broadway spectacle than a Shakespeare play. Maybe part of the motion picture's playfulness derives from the fact that none of the filmmakers or cast approach the story as a sacrosanct classic but rather as just another of WB's blithe comedies. The tone is always light (even if the sets and costuming are overly extravagant), the dialogue never sounds stiff or stilted (even if it doesn't come off as lyrically as one would like), the sight gags are funny (of which Shakespeare would undoubtedly have approved), and Mendelssohn's famous music, arranged by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, plays continually in the background to buoy up the good spirits.

My own introduction to "A Midsummer Night's Dream," the play, came in the eighth grade where my old English teacher assigned parts to the class and made us read it aloud without much introduction. About two pages in, I became hopelessly lost. The story has so many characters in it, so many mistaken identities, so many people put under spells and falling in love with the wrong folks that even after having seen the various movies of it and read the thing a couple of dozen times, I have trouble remembering who is who.

Yet in this production, it doesn't much matter. You'll recognize the characters by the actors playing the roles, and you'll have little trouble with Shakespeare's language because the filmmakers removed so much of it, the excised dialogue replaced by opulent musical numbers, ballets, and general pageantry.

Problems? You bet. The costumes, for instance. Shakespeare set the play in ancient Greece--in a real world of humans and in an enchanted forest of mythological creatures--but nobody appears to have mentioned that to the movie's costume designer, who puts everyone in clothes that span the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries. What's more, with the Overture and exit music, the movie is too long at 143 minutes. In addition, many of the film's sequences get congested with too many actors and extras milling about and too much scenery for the eye to take in. And there's surely too much stage magic replacing Shakespeare's verbal magic. The author left a good deal to one's imagination, while this film leaves nothing to one's fancy.

In his audio commentary, film historian Scott MacQueen tells us Joe E. Brown wrote in his memoirs that "...the Bard's words have been spoken better, but never bigger or louder." That just about sums up the film, which has never pleased Shakespeare purists but has usually enchanted the masses. Call me one of the masses. 7/10

Video:
The video standouts of the collection, naturally, are the newest films, the spectacular and colorful "Hamlet" and "Othello." But it's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" I'm concentrating on, so let me assure you it looks great, too, for a 1935, black-and-white film in a standard, 1.33:1 screen size. It is beautifully clean and free of age marks of any kind, with good B&W contrasts and reasonably decent definition.

Audio:
The audio engineers present "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the 1.0 monaural format of its day, processed via Dolby Digital. The six-minute Overture sets the stage, showing us how nicely WB restored the sound. There is a very slight background noise, the frequency extremes are limited, and it can get a bit harsh in the loudest passages, but otherwise its midrange sounds fine most of the time.

Extras:
Each of the discs contains its own set of extras. Here are the ones on "A Midsummer Night's Dream." To begin, we have an audio commentary by the always astute film historian Scott MacQueen. He offers a ton of research, facts, and trivia about the filmmakers and the filmmaking, concentrating on many of the artistic battles that went on behind the camera. After that is a seven-minute vintage featurette, "A Dream Comes True," which takes us further behind the scenes in promoting the film. Then there's "Warner Bros. Studio Cafe," a two-minute promo with Joe E. Brown and Pat O'Brien (who isn't even in the film), followed by a gallery of six short presentations showcasing various cast members introducing the movie. Then there's a twenty-minute musical short, "Shake Mr. Shakespeare," and an eight-minute Olivia de Havilland screen test.

"Dream" also contains thirty-two scene selections (but no chapter insert); an original theatrical trailer; English as the only spoken language; French and Portuguese subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Thoughts:
There are endless delights for the Shakespeare buff in this collection and for the average moviegoer as well, from the power of Olivier's dramatic presentation of "Othello" and Branagh's uncut "Hamlet" to the wholly Hollywood productions of "Romeo and Juliet" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Olivier, Branagh, Shearer, and Howard. A little something for everyone, you know?

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