Ein Sommernachtstraum

Jiri Trnka - master Czech animator, illustrator, and sculptor. I sing his praises constantly, but this time I wasn't quite as enamored by the animation. While "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is definitely worth seeing, (so colorful) I feel that much less of the camera work and animation was done by Trnka himself.

Animating a human puppet convincingly was always something that Trnka managed to do, but the animation within "A Midsummer Night's Dream" feels a little rough around the edges when compared to the previous work within "Old Czech Legends" (which is still my favorite piece, simply due to the quality of the work, and the odd content).

So in short, don't pass this one up, but you might be slightly disappointed if you're an uber animation nerd. I have only see this work without English captions/voices.

Alas, the version I saw was not the one listed here - with narration by Richard Burton and voices dubbed by luminaries of the Royal Shakespeare Company - but an alternative one with a very cloying woman (uncredited, and deservedly so!) who tells the whole story in voiceover. The result was less 'William Shakespeare Presents' than 'Tales for Toddler Time.' Frankly, I don't know why they bothered with narration at all, as Trnka's animation is so magically vivid as to make words superfluous.

In fact, this film is a masterpiece of visual storytelling - a reminder of just how wondrous animation can be when it doesn't insult a viewer's intelligence a la Walt Disney. Indeed, it's surprisingly adult at times. A randy goat (under the influence of magic love potion) tries to rape the fairy Puck. The two runaway lovers, Hermia and Lysander, slip into an eerily vulva-shaped cave to consummate their love. Strange, then, that Trnka cuts out the story's gay element - the desire of the Fairy King Oberon for the changeling boy. Perhaps that was more than Communist-era censors could take.

Otherwise, this is an exemplary reading of the text. Jiri Trnka's visualisation of the Enchanted Forest - every inch of it swathed in moonlight and dripping with rose petals, fairy wings, spying owls - rivals the Baroque splendours of the 1935 Max Reinhardt film. Even the amateur actors' performance of 'Pyramus and Thisbe' (an irksome comic interlude in most stagings) is transformed by Puck's magic into a heart-soaring experience. A must for anyone who loves Shakespeare - or, more important, anyone who doesn't - this is one dream you won't want to wake up from!

David Melville

There were plenty of reasons for wanting to see this 1959 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. One being that it is based on one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, or at least certainly one of my favourites of his. Two is that it is stop-motion/puppet animation and there are some fine examples of that style in film etc. The more seen of Jiri Trnka, an unfamiliar director to me until recently via this and 'The Emperor's Nightingale', the more he and his work fascinated me.

'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is to me one of his best, 'Bajaja' being another favourite, and because of it being such a well known story it is one of his most accessible. A good thing for anybody who had not connected with some of his other films, with some finding some of his films too on the slow side and finding the unfamiliarity of the language being a problem, and yet to see this. 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is truly great and very enchanting, as well as a very welcome distraction through a difficult time in many ways.

Do agree that the narration doesn't entirely work. Can understand why it was included, to make it accessible for a wider audience, and it is beautifully delivered, but it was pretty talk heavy and interrupted the flow at times. For such a well known story and because the visuals alone tell the story, it wasn't always needed.

However, 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' is a visual masterpiece and one of Trnka's best looking films. The Enchanted Forest backgrounds and the vivid atmosphere the colours evoke make for some of the most beautiful and bordering on miraculous visuals Trnka ever did and the photography enhances them spectacularly. Personally thought that the characters looked fine and not rough or stiff. The music has a nice whimsy and folksy beauty.

Furthermore, the heart, charm, humour and magic of the play are never lost. The humour sparkles, has wit and never comes over crudely, the characters are charming and fun, it is easy to care for the characters' situations and invest in those situations and the magic is in the production design and colourful atmosphere alone. The Pyramus and Thisbe sequence is delightful here and warmed my heart, which is not always the case with this sequence. Any omissions do not harm things at all or make the pace jump about too much.

While the story is a complicated one, it doesn't feel incoherent and despite it being unmistakably Czech it doesn't lose Shakespeare's spirit at the same time. The characters are well delivered and true to character, the funny characters genuinely amuse and are full of personality (without unbalancing things) and the lovers are not passive or personality-free.

Concluding, great and one of Trnka's best. Very fascinating if one wants to see Shakespeare done in a different language and style. 9/10.

In my opinion Czech puppet animator JIRI TRNKA outdid himself when he created this version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream".This film's aesthetic beauty is only superceded by it's technical excellence for clearly TRNKA had moved away from his earlier techniques and developed a new one.

In his film "The Emperor's Nightingale" the puppets were silent, as actors were silent in the days before talkies. But in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" the puppet's were silent in the way that actors in mime, or ballet dancers are silent.

There was also a basic difference in expression: In the first film the movement was symbolic,in the second, the action was expressed through the language of mime.

All in all... a triumph of stop-motion cinema.

Steve Weber The Laughing Egg Studio