Puck on Film

A touch of class

The film and stage production before it utilize the 19th century scores that Felix Mendelssohn had composed for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Mendelssohn’s wedding march is still one of the most recognizable pieces of wedding music in the western world. The film version had these classical scores re-orchestrated by Austrian composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Korngold would continue to compose Hollywood scores – including one particularly near and dear to me, the Oscar-winning score from 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood.

This was very much billed as a prestigious production with a lengthy overture of Mendelssohn’s score and a title card that reads “Warner Brothers have the honor to present A Max Reinhardt Production: A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” (Although the overture and exit music only played in the higher-priced “road show” screenings.) There was no mistaking that this production was meant to have a touch of class – a far cry from the lower-budget gangster pictures or the Busby Berkey musicals that Warner Brothers was then famous for. The large cast of Athenian onlookers signing in praise of their duke in the initial scene are an early indicator of the film’s budget – closer to the Berkeley than gangster tradition.

That scene might have been musical, but it also contained a bit of film language that was pure silent film. Among the singers were the four Athenian lovers – Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius and Helena. They gazed longingly or angrily glared at each other, during the song, setting up the conflict better than dialogue ever could. Quince also is visibly frustrated with his group of mechanicals – stumbling through this opening song, as they’d stumble through the lamentable comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe later in the movie.

 The scenes were cut and rearranged, and while Shakespeare’s dialogue is still there – it was often given slightly modern tweaks. (Such as replacing “thou” with “you” on occasion.)