A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968 film)

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A Midsummer Night's Dream
Peter Hall
Based onA Midsummer Night's Dream
1600 play
by William Shakespeare
Produced byMichael Birkett
Starring
CinematographyPeter Suschitzky
Edited byJack Harris
Music byGuy Woolfenden
Production
companies
Distributed byEagle
Release date
September 1968
Running time
124 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a 1968 British film of

Peter Hall
.

Production

It stars Derek Godfrey as Theseus, Barbara Jefford as Hippolyta, Diana Rigg as Helena, Helen Mirren as Hermia, David Warner as Lysander, Ian Holm as Puck, Ian Richardson as King Oberon, Judi Dench as Queen Titania, and Paul Rogers as Bottom, as well as other members of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The film premiered in theatres in Europe in September 1968.[1] In the U.S., it was sold directly to television rather than playing in theatres, and premiered as a Sunday evening special, on the night of 9 February 1969. It was shown on CBS (with commercials).[2]

The film was only the second, after

The Arden Shakespeare, third series edition of the play—describes it as "a notable blending of the traditional with the innovative."[4] Peter Holland, editor of The Oxford Shakespeare edition described it as "[turning] the sentimentality into something rougher and muddier; his fairies, accompanying Titania (Judi Dench), naked with her modesty covered by a long wig, were dirty urchins covered in mud."[5]

The "Athens" scenes were shot at Compton Verney House.[6]

Cast

Reception

The film was generally poorly received by critics.[7] Penelope Houston, reviewing the film for The Spectator, wrote:[8]

Mr Hall's lovers … caper in their mini-skirts and flowered Beatle blouses … around a stately home so sparsely furnished that you feel the removal men are either assembling or dismantling. But stage influences and scaling creep in: half the time … they might as well be running around one small studio-planted coppice, with another daub of mud slapped over their foreheads at the end of each circuit. Make-up seems to present unlikely difficulties: Peaseblossom, Mustard Seed and their confreres … appear startlingly haggard, as though late nights ministering to Titania were taking their toll. The vaguely silvery, vaguely dun-coloured faces of Oberon's flock seem to belong at stage distance; close-up, the fairy kingdom looks like a dusky progressive school suffering from a nasty epidemic of pink-eye.

References

Informational notes

Citations

  1. ^ Mullin 1975, p. 529.
  2. ^ BUFVC: Midsummer Night's Dream, A n.d.
  3. ^ a b Chaudhuri 2017, p. 38.
  4. ^ a b c d Chaudhuri 2017, pp. 17–18.
  5. ^ Holland 2008, p. 25.
  6. ^ Mullin 1975, p. 532.
  7. ^ Mullin 1975, pp. 529, 534.
  8. ^ Houston 1969.

Bibliography

  • "Midsummer Night's Dream, A".
    British Universities Film and Video Council
    . n.d. Retrieved 7 July 2018.
  • Chaudhuri, Sukanta, ed. (2017). A Midsummer Night's Dream. .
  • Holland, Peter, ed. (2008). A Midsummer Night's Dream. .
  • .
  • Mullin, Michael (1975). "Peter Hall's Midsummer Night's Dream on Film". .

Further reading

External links