Shakespeare in Performance: Film
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1981, Elijah Moshinsky)
| Title | A Midsummer Night's Dream |
|---|---|
| Year | 1981 |
| Release Locations | GB |
| Director | Elijah Moshinsky |
| Medium | Color video |
| Length | 2 hrs |
| Audience | general public high school junior high |
| Play Connections | A Midsummer Night's Dream (teleplay) |
| Series | The Shakespeare Plays |
Description
After 1980 with Jonathan Miller as the new producer replacing Cedric Messina, the BBC Shakespeare Plays increasingly stressed the contemporaneousness of Shakespeare's plays. That is to say, an effort was made to copy the life styles of Shakespeare's own period as portrayed in the works of the great masters of the Italian and Northern Renaisssance. The theory was that in Shakespeare's playhouses only the principals were likely to wear authentic costumes anyway no matter what the time period. A famous engraving actually shows a performance of Titus Andronicus in which the major actors wear Roman dress but the lesser persons are garbed as Elizabethans. In this Midsummer Night's Dream the influence of Rembrandt is particularly apparent with special reference to Danae's Bower. The results, as also with director Moshinksy's very baroque All's Well, are not merely visually striking but also historically appropriate
Description from Shakespeare on Screen : an International Filmography and Videography by Kenneth S. Rothwell and Annabelle Henkin Melzer. ©1990 Kenneth S. Rothwell. Cited by permission. — Added 2008-11-14
Cast Overview
Production Team and Crew Overview
Production information courtesy of: Kenneth Rothwell