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A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
	Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Peter Hall
Based on	A Midsummer Night's Dream; 1600 play; by William Shakespeare
Produced by	Michael Birkett
Starring	Derek Godfrey; Ian Holm; Helen Mirren; Barbara Jefford; Diana Rigg; David Warner; Michael Jayston; Judi Dench;
Cinematography	Peter Suschitzky
Edited by	Jack Harris
Music by	Guy Woolfenden
Production; companies	Filmways, Royal Shakespeare Enterprises
Distributed by	Eagle
Release date	September 1968;
Running time	124 minutes
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a 1968 British film of William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by 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 Max Reinhardt's 1935 film, sound film adaptation of the play.^[3]^[a] It portrayed the fairies as "wild, near-naked creatures in a primitive, sinister wood."^[4] and "the subsidiary fairies were bedraggled child actors; the artisans authentic, almost contemporary rustics."^[4] that "contrasted with the sedate courtly milieu of an actual Warwickshire country house."^[4] Sukanta Chaudhuri—editor of 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

Derek Godfrey as Theseus
Ian Holm as Puck, or Robin Goodfellow
Judi Dench as Titania
Helen Mirren as Hermia
Paul Rogers as Bottom
Diana Rigg as Helena
Ian Richardson as Oberon
David Warner as Lysander
Michael Jayston as Demetrius
Sebastian Shaw as Quince
Bill Travers as Snout
Clive Swift as Snug
Donald Eccles as Starveling
John Normington as Flute
Barbara Jefford as Hippolyta
Nicholas Selby as Egeus
Hugh Sullivan as Philostrate

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

^ Excepting Jiří Trnka's 1959 puppet version.^[3]

Citations

^ Mullin 1975, p. 529.
^ BUFVC: Midsummer Night's Dream, A n.d.
^ ^a ^b Chaudhuri 2017, p. 38.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Chaudhuri 2017, pp. 17–18.
^ Holland 2008, p. 25.
^ Mullin 1975, p. 532.
^ Mullin 1975, pp. 529, 534.
^ 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. The Arden Shakespeare, third series. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1408133491.
Holland, Peter, ed. (2008). A Midsummer Night's Dream. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199535866.
Houston, Penelope (7 February 1969). "Lost in the woods". The Spectator: 20. ISSN 0038-6952.
Mullin, Michael (1975). "Peter Hall's Midsummer Night's Dream on Film". Educational Theatre Journal. 27 (4). The Johns Hopkins University Press: 529–534. doi:10.2307/3206388. ISSN 0013-1989. JSTOR 3206388.

Further reading

Crowl, Samuel (1992). Shakespeare Observed: Studies in Performance on Stage and Screen. Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780821410349.
Jorgens, Jack J. (1977). "Peter Hall's A Midsummer Night's Dream". Shakespeare on Film. Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253351968.
"Review of A Midsummer Night's Dream". The Times. 30 January 1969.
"Review of A Midsummer Night's Dream". The Guardian. 31 January 1969. p. 8 – via Newspapers.com.
"Review of A Midsummer Night's Dream". The Observer. 2 February 1969. p. 27 – via Newspapers.com.