Warner Brothers's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)

PATRICIA KING HANSON: Like many of the sort of highbrow films that were made in the 30s, it was a noble effort. Warner Brothers hired Max Reinhardt, the noted European stage director, to create this wonderful Shakespearean play, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Unfortunately, sometimes theatrical impresarios do not adapt well to film. So when you see it, it's a very stagy, kind of overblown version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. And it is funny in parts, but a lot of them, especially to modern audiences, are only funny because they are a little bit embarrassing to watch.

For example, seeing James Cagney as Bottom. Now, he's a wonderful actor and can do almost anything, but he wasn't particularly good in that part. And little Mickey Rooney, who at the time maybe was about, I don't know, twelve or thirteen, playing Puck, and it's a little grating when you see it now. And people like Dick Powell. They used a lot of the Warner Brothers stars who were great actors and popular in musicals and dramas, but it just didn't work in the Shakespearean version.