SHAKESPEARE COLLECTION - DVD review

Adapting Shakespeare's stage works to the screen has always been problematical. Most of the time, it's a matter of how much the filmmakers edit, cut out, for the convenience of a two-hour movie; other times, it's a matter of how much they should shoot on a soundstage and how much on location. Then, there's the matter of the actors, their stage or screen presence, their diction, and their presentation. Finally, there's the question of how much, if any, of the Bard should be dumbed for movie audiences. To one degree or another, these issues arise in the movies offered here, the "Warner Brothers Shakespeare Collection," which contains four famous releases from 1935-1996. WB make all of them available separately as well as in the box set.

Chronologically, the first movie in the collection is "A Midsummer Night's Dream" from 1935. It is probably the least Shakespearean of the films included, but it remains the most interesting among these issues, so I'll discuss it in more detail in a moment.

Next up, we find the 1936 production of "Romeo and Juliet," directed by George Cukor and starring Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard. The filmmakers cut it slightly and made it somewhat stagey, but the dialogue comes off quite poetically. The problem lies with the casting. In Shakespeare's play, the author does not specify Romeo's age but hints at mid-to-late teens. The author does, however, tell us that Juliet is in her early teens ("She hath not seen the change of fourteen years"), too young for her father readily to agree to her marriage to Count Paris. Unfortunately, Ms. Shearer, playing Juliet, was in her mid thirties at the time of the shooting, and Howard, playing Romeo, was just over forty. Literature is all about imagination, naturally, but trying to imagine Shearer and Howard as teenagers (or their "young" companions John Barrymore, Reginald Denny, and Basil Rathbone) is a stretch, and without their being teenagers, one rather loses the point of the story. 6/10

The third film in the set is Laurence Olivier's "Othello" from 1965. Olivier and most of the cast had just finished a successful run with the play at the National Theatre of Great Britain, so it's no wonder their characterizations won four of them Oscar nominations, including Olivier for Best Actor. Here, we get gorgeous widescreen color and equally gorgeous widescreen acting from not only Olivier but Maggie Smith, Joyce Redman, and Frank Finley among others. These are powerful performances. The "however" is that the movie comes across as little more than a filmed stage production, with lavish sets, to be sure, but always with the stage in mind. It's as close as one can come to watching live theater in a movie, to be sure, but it never really takes advantage of the locations, the music, the editing, the lighting, and the camera work that good cinema has to offer. 8/10

The newest movie in the collection is Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet" from 1996. It has the distinction of being the only version of the celebrated play presented completely uncut. As a result, the film is 242 minutes long, which might be a really long haul for anybody not already a Shakespeare fan. Everything about the production, though, is first class, from the all-star casting of Branagh in the lead role (he also directs) to Julie Christie, Billy Crystal, Gerard Depardieu, Charlton Heston, Derek Jacobi, Jack Lemmon, Rufus Sewell, Robin Williams, and Kate Winslet in supporting roles. Perhaps oddly, though, it has always seemed to me that the casting is too much of a good thing, with Branagh a bit larger-than-life for the part and the other actors calling attention to themselves by their celebrity. It sure is nice to look at, in any case, in glorious anamorphic widescreen color. Because of its length and the number of extras WB provides, "Hamlet" comes in a Two-Disc Special Edition. 8/10

Which brings us back to "A Midsummer Night's Dream" from 1935, a film produced and co-directed by Max Reinhardt (with William Dieterle). By the standards of its day, it was also a lavish production, Warner Bros. providing many of their top stars for the occasion.

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" stands at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Olivier and Branagh productions. "Dream" is an overdone, overproduced, overblown, overacted affair with the studio throwing everybody and everything into it but the commissary's kitchen sink. Shakespeare gets rather lost in the shuffle, many of his speeches cut mercilessly, but it's hard to deny the film isn't fun to watch.

As Branagh did later, WB rounded up many of their biggest names of the day, including James Cagney as the scene-stealing Bottom, the weaver turned would-be actor; Olivia de Havilland and Dick Powell as the young lovers, Lysander and Hermia; Joe E. Brown as Flute, who will win your heart in the finale; Mickey Rooney, whose boisterous Puck is far too much of a good thing and wearies quickly; Victor Jory as Oberon, the pompous King of the Fairies; Anita Louise as Titania, the lovely Queen of the Fairies; Jean Muir and Ross Alexander as Helena and Demetrius, two more young lovers; Ian Hunter as Theseus, the Duke of Athens, and Verree Teasdale as Hippolyta, his betrothed, the Queen of the Amazons; plus Frank McHugh, Hobart Cavanaugh, Arthur Treacher, Billy Barty, and many more in smaller parts; it's quite a list.

But it's Cagney who stands out. The guy could do anything. He probably remains best known for his little tough guy roles, but he was equally at home in light comedy, music and dance, and, here, in Shakespeare. He's rough around the edges but perfect for the part.

Theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt and his co-director William Dieterle ("Madame DuBarry," "The Story of Louis Pasteur," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," "The Devil and Daniel Webster") tried to cover every base, and the movie comes off more like a Broadway spectacle than a Shakespeare play. Maybe part of the motion picture's playfulness derives from the fact that none of the filmmakers or cast approach the story as a sacrosanct classic but rather as just another of WB's blithe comedies. The tone is always light (even if the sets and costuming are overly extravagant), the dialogue never sounds stiff or stilted (even if it doesn't come off as lyrically as one would like), the sight gags are funny (of which Shakespeare would undoubtedly have approved), and Mendelssohn's famous music, arranged by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, plays continually in the background to buoy up the good spirits.

My own introduction to "A Midsummer Night's Dream," the play, came in the eighth grade where my old English teacher assigned parts to the class and made us read it aloud without much introduction. About two pages in, I became hopelessly lost. The story has so many characters in it, so many mistaken identities, so many people put under spells and falling in love with the wrong folks that even after having seen the various movies of it and read the thing a couple of dozen times, I have trouble remembering who is who.

Yet in this production, it doesn't much matter. You'll recognize the characters by the actors playing the roles, and you'll have little trouble with Shakespeare's language because the filmmakers removed so much of it, the excised dialogue replaced by opulent musical numbers, ballets, and general pageantry.

Problems? You bet. The costumes, for instance. Shakespeare set the play in ancient Greece--in a real world of humans and in an enchanted forest of mythological creatures--but nobody appears to have mentioned that to the movie's costume designer, who puts everyone in clothes that span the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries. What's more, with the Overture and exit music, the movie is too long at 143 minutes. In addition, many of the film's sequences get congested with too many actors and extras milling about and too much scenery for the eye to take in. And there's surely too much stage magic replacing Shakespeare's verbal magic. The author left a good deal to one's imagination, while this film leaves nothing to one's fancy.

In his audio commentary, film historian Scott MacQueen tells us Joe E. Brown wrote in his memoirs that "...the Bard's words have been spoken better, but never bigger or louder." That just about sums up the film, which has never pleased Shakespeare purists but has usually enchanted the masses. Call me one of the masses. 7/10

Video:
The video standouts of the collection, naturally, are the newest films, the spectacular and colorful "Hamlet" and "Othello." But it's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" I'm concentrating on, so let me assure you it looks great, too, for a 1935, black-and-white film in a standard, 1.33:1 screen size. It is beautifully clean and free of age marks of any kind, with good B&W contrasts and reasonably decent definition.

Audio:
The audio engineers present "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the 1.0 monaural format of its day, processed via Dolby Digital. The six-minute Overture sets the stage, showing us how nicely WB restored the sound. There is a very slight background noise, the frequency extremes are limited, and it can get a bit harsh in the loudest passages, but otherwise its midrange sounds fine most of the time.

Extras:
Each of the discs contains its own set of extras. Here are the ones on "A Midsummer Night's Dream." To begin, we have an audio commentary by the always astute film historian Scott MacQueen. He offers a ton of research, facts, and trivia about the filmmakers and the filmmaking, concentrating on many of the artistic battles that went on behind the camera. After that is a seven-minute vintage featurette, "A Dream Comes True," which takes us further behind the scenes in promoting the film. Then there's "Warner Bros. Studio Cafe," a two-minute promo with Joe E. Brown and Pat O'Brien (who isn't even in the film), followed by a gallery of six short presentations showcasing various cast members introducing the movie. Then there's a twenty-minute musical short, "Shake Mr. Shakespeare," and an eight-minute Olivia de Havilland screen test.

"Dream" also contains thirty-two scene selections (but no chapter insert); an original theatrical trailer; English as the only spoken language; French and Portuguese subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Thoughts:
There are endless delights for the Shakespeare buff in this collection and for the average moviegoer as well, from the power of Olivier's dramatic presentation of "Othello" and Branagh's uncut "Hamlet" to the wholly Hollywood productions of "Romeo and Juliet" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Olivier, Branagh, Shearer, and Howard. A little something for everyone, you know?