A Midsummer Night's Dream

Cigar-chomping Jack Warner does Shakespeare? What fools these mortals be! Theatrical genius Max Reinhardt had successfully staged the play in Europe and felt that A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM was ideal for film, because the fairy sequences offered the proper magic for celluloid. Reinhardt, though, had no idea how to shoot this masterpiece, and blurry rushes of several forest scenes suggested that entrusting him with $1.5 million was unwise. So experienced Hollywood man Dieterle and a new cinematographer were added; Hal Mohr's lensing of the film (the only time a write-in ever won an Oscar) turned out to be its one real triumph. Years later, Powell would claim that he ...