Page 76 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

A Fairy Tale for Grown-ups / 65

of ten-year-old Rooney and the "over-energetic jabberings" of Cagney.
A movie that mixes and matches faux-Grecian sets with Brooklynese
accents does appear at odds with itself. Those rare heartland viewers
who showed up at local bijous for a taste of the Bard were astounded
at the then-radical image of a black male sprite seducing a lilly-white
virgin. Joseph Breen's Hollywood censors raised their eyebrows,
closely considering whether this was art or eroticism.
In fact, Jack Warner, during those early days of Will Hays's Pro-
duction Code, was anxious enough about the comical kissing
between top macho star Cagney and Brown's cross-dressing compan-
ion in the play within a play to suggest adding a wife for Bottom,
defusing any possible confusion about the character's sexual identity.
Max steadfastly refused, insisting that Shakespeare's text remain
intact, at least that part of it he himself didn't truncate. With trepi-
dation, Warner relented, realizing this was his riskiest project. As
film historians Kenneth Rothwell and Annabelle Melzer would note
in retrospect: "The 'Americanization' of Shakespeare by way of
German Expressionism was what this film was all about—a cultural
Declaration of Independence against the widely held prejudice that
only British actors can play Shakespeare. Hollywood was saying
Shakespeare is for the entire English-speaking world, not just the
English."
Reinhardt's appreciation of anachronistic theater was obvious
from the opening. Theseus (Ian Hunter) and Hippolyta (Verree Teas-
dale) appear in the expected ancient-world garb; guards likewise
sport helmets and armor. When the camera cuts to the cheering
crowd, however, middle-class characters, particularly women, are
dressed in Elizabethan English finery. Likewise, the rude mechani-
cals are the British working class of Shakespeare's time, more likely
to head for Sherwood Forest than a wood outside Athens. This adds
to the fairy-tale-for-adults quality, a story taking place once upon a
none-too-specific time, and far, far away, in a marvelous realm of
myth and legend rather than history.
However one feels about individual performances or the cutting of
lines in favor of music and movement, no one can deny that the
imagery catches the viewer's eye, jolts the mind, and lingers in the
memory. The biggest problem was the staging of the play within a
play. It is anticlimactic, following the rightful pairing off of young
lovers. Onstage, the lengthy farce that follows can be made to work,
since in Shakespeare's time the real-life, royal-wedding audience
watched Bottom and company over the shoulders of the theatrical