{"id":12576,"date":"2026-08-05T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/?p=12576"},"modified":"2026-07-29T09:33:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T09:33:27","slug":"old-hollywood-chases-a-fairy-tale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/old-hollywood-chases-a-fairy-tale\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Hollywood Chases a Fairy Tale"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>6 Minute, 57 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

MOVIE REVIEW
\nA Midsummer Night's Dream<\/strong>
\n –  <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Genre: <\/strong>Comedy, Fantasy, Romance
\nYear Released:<\/strong> 1935, 2026 Warner Archive Blu-ray
\nRuntime: <\/strong>2h 23m
\nDirectors: <\/strong>Max Reinhardt, William Dieterle
\nWriters: <\/strong>William Shakespeare, Charles Kenyon, Mary C. McCall Jr.
\nCast: <\/strong>James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, Mickey Rooney, Joe E. Brown, Dick Powell, Jean Muir, Victor Jory, Anita Louise
\nWhere to Watch: <\/strong>available now, order your copy here: www.moviezyng.com<\/a> or www.amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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RAVING REVIEW: <\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>Warner Bros. built its reputation on gangsters, down-on-their-luck workers, crowded city streets, and “the tough guy” who knew how to throw a punch. Dropping that studio’s contract players into Shakespeare’s enchanted forest sounds almost like an act of mischief or like someone lost a bet. The surprise is that A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM doesn’t merely survive the collision. At its best, the clash between rough-edged Hollywood personalities and Max Reinhardt’s elaborate theatrical imagination gives the movie a character that a more traditionally cast adaptation would have likely never found.<\/p>\n

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Hermia loves Lysander, Helena loves Demetrius, and Demetrius is expected to marry Hermia. Their escape into the forest places all four under the influence of Oberon, Titania, and the dangerously enthusiastic Puck, whose use of a love-inducing flower sends everyone chasing the wrong person. Nearby, a group of tradesmen rehearses a tragedy for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, with the supremely confident Bottom assuming that every role would benefit from his personal attention. It’s a lot, don’t get me wrong, but it works, even with all the chaos!<\/p>\n

Reinhardt and co-director William Dieterle don’t try to make the film feel “real”. The forest glitters, fog drifts across massive sets, fairies move through glimmering light, and bodies seem to appear from the darkness rather than simply entering the frame. Hal Mohr’s black-and-white cinematography turns the setting into something stranger than realism could provide. The branches, metallic surfaces, reflective cobwebs, and dense layers of movement create a place that looks manufactured and unfathomable at the same time. Nearly a century later, its most beautiful images retain the eerie softness of an illustrated storybook discovered in an attic.<\/p>\n

That beauty can become exhausting. The production keeps adding dancers, children, creatures, glitter, smoke, music, and visual effects long after the forest has established its spell. At 2h 23m, this presentation asks the audience to spend a great deal of time admiring the inner workings of the dream. The extended dances and ceremonial sequences occasionally make Shakespeare’s comedy feel like an attraction mounted around the play rather than a screen adaptation shaped from it.<\/p>\n

Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s arrangement of Felix Mendelssohn’s music is essential to holding those competing urges together. The score lends grace to the pageantry. It can be romantic, playful, grand, and almost threatening. The music gives the forest some depth of logic even when the staging becomes crowded enough to obscure the human one.<\/p>\n

James Cagney is the actor who best understands how to occupy such an oversized production without disappearing inside it. His Bottom is loud, vain, generous, foolish, and completely convinced that enthusiasm can replace talent. Cagney doesn’t approach Shakespeare as some sacred language that needs to be displayed behind glass. He speaks it as though Bottom has just thought of every line himself, using his entire body to turn the character’s confidence into a running joke. The donkey’s head doesn’t diminish him because the performance was already built around proud, physical absurdity.<\/p>\n

Frank McHugh, Hugh Herbert, Dewey Robinson, Otis Harlan, and Joe E. Brown bring familiar Warner timing to performers who have no idea how bad they are. Their production of Pyramus and Thisbe is where the movie’s affection for theatrical failure finally pays off. Brown’s commitment as Flute, especially once dragged into playing Thisbe, is hilarious because no one involved treats the disaster as anything less than a major artistic achievement.<\/p>\n

Olivia de Havilland brings an alert, youthful presence to Hermia in the role that started her screen career. At the same time, Jean Muir gives Helena enough wounded determination to keep her from becoming only the rejected lover. Their confrontation is one of the rare stretches where the movie’s scale falls away, and the comedy comes directly from personality, jealousy, and physical frustration. Dick Powell and Ross Alexander are less comfortable in their roles, though their stiffness sometimes works for two men being pushed through emotions they barely understand.<\/p>\n

Victor Jory’s Oberon feels like it belongs to a darker fantasy than much of the surrounding production. His austere facial expression, controlled delivery, and winged followers introduce a trace of menace that the movie could have used more often. Anita Louise makes Titania regal without draining the humor from her enchanted devotion to Bottom. Their scenes suggest that the fairies aren’t harmless decorations. They’re powerful, temperamental beings treating human desire as material for experimentation.<\/p>\n

Mickey Rooney’s Puck is the element most likely to divide an audience, although “divide” may be too gentle for the reaction he inspires. Rooney leaps, shrieks, cackles, claws at the air, and attacks nearly every moment as though silence would kill him. The performance has a feral quality that fits a creature unconcerned with human comfort, but the repetition becomes punishing. Puck is supposed to disrupt the evening. Rooney often disrupts the movie.<\/p>\n

The Blu-ray makes the production’s visuals easier to appreciate than older home-video editions ever could. Fine textures in the costumes, layers of fog, and the contrast between glowing fairies and deep forest shadows come through with impressive clarity while preserving the soft diffusion that defines Mohr’s work. The mono audio track keeps the dialogue clear and gives Mendelssohn and Korngold’s music satisfying presence without trying to disguise the recording’s age.<\/p>\n

Warner Archive has also assembled a great set of historical supplements. Scott MacQueen’s commentary gives the production proper context, while A Dream Comes True offers a contemporary look at the scale of the undertaking. Olivia de Havilland’s screen tests are especially fun because they capture the beginning of a career that would soon outgrow the studio’s plans for her. The trailers, studio material, and Shake, Mr. Shakespeare short round out a release that treats the movie as both entertainment and a piece of Warner history.<\/p>\n

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM can be enchanting, overbearing, funny, beautiful, and irritating within a single breath. Its excesses aren’t separate from its appeal; they’re the cost of a studio and a theater director trying to make Shakespeare feel impossibly immense. The movie doesn’t always know when it has done enough, and Rooney makes certain stretches difficult to endure. Cagney, Mohr, Korngold, and the mechanicals keep pulling it back from the edge, leaving behind a strange, lavish experiment whose rough spots have become part of its personality.<\/p>\n

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[photo courtesy of WARNER ARCHIVE, MOVIE ZYNG, AV ENTERTAINMENT]<\/em><\/p>\n

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MOVIE REVIEW A Midsummer Night's Dream –      Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Romance Year Released: 1935, 2026 Warner Archive Blu-ray Runtime: 2h 23m Directors: Max Reinhardt, William Dieterle Writers: William Shakespeare, Charles Kenyon, Mary C. McCall Jr. Cast: James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, Mickey Rooney, Joe E. Brown, Dick Powell, Jean Muir, Victor Jory, Anita Louise Where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/img\/0367\/0367498.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t