Page 81 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

70 I Shakespeare in the Movies

of Reinhardt," Roger Manvell noted, the earlier film reflecting "the
romantic, spectacular tradition at its height." Whatever one thinks
of Hall's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespearean cinema com-
pletists should catch it if only for purposes of comparison with Rein-
hardt's polar opposite.

A Variation on the Theme

Woody Allen's 1982 film, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, was
inspired by Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream (as well as
Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night and Jean Renoir's Day
in the Country), allowing for a multiple homage to Allen's favorite
sophisticated comedies. A departure for a filmmaker who ordinarily
shoots in Manhattan, Sex Comedy sets the problems of three attrac-
tive couples to music by Mendelssohn rather than Gershwin, the
norm for Allen.
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is set in 1906 in a Green
World that looks suspiciously like rural Connecticut. More than
once, couples are mismatched, as in the Bard's play. There's even an
element of the supernatural: A miraculous globe allows the sensuous
six to peek into an alternative dimension of sprites, coexisting with
the real world, much as Titania, Oberon, and Puck did. Though the
dialogue is contemporary (and anachronistic for the supposed time
period), Allen labors sincerely (if not always successfully) to bring
Shakespeare's pastoral spirit to the screen. We always sense the para-
dox of a filmmaker who admits to hating the country but awkwardly
works in a genre that celebrates both the beauty and danger of
nature.