ENORMOUS LENGTH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22142, 22 June 1935, Page 11 (Supplement)

ENORMOUS LENGTH

" MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM " HERR REINHARDT'S TROUBLES r Tbe Herr-professor Reinhardt, who in 1925 said, "I am not interested in the motion picture; it is a dangerous parasite of the theatre, of literature and other arts," has been busy cutting down " A Midsummer Night's Dre.irn" from 453,000 ft., or roughly 85 miles, to about 13,000 ft., or a mere two and a-half miles. "Reinhardt," we read, "is bestowing upon this shortening process the same tender care that he has given ever. 1 / angle of the 'Dream' since' early

last autumn, when preparation was begun for the celluloiding of the spectacle which he had presented so triumphantly in the open a.'r at the Hollywood Bowl." "The Teuton maestro" —one finds the temptation to quote irresistible —" has hated to scissor away the lovely scenes."

The trouble is he has run up against the awkward fact discovered 10 years ago by another Teuton maestro, Erich von Stroheim —though in Stroheim's cast) the film was only 180,000 ft. long. This is that, allowing a maximum running time of two hours, his 453,000 ft. would have to be shot through the projector at 42.5 miles per hour. Now with the best will in the world _no operator can exceed the regulation spe-sd limit of 90ft. a minute, which would give the maestro's work a running time of three days and 10 hours. This was considered too long. Hence the. frightfulness now proceeding in the cutting room. It was the coming of talk that changed the professor's views about the movies. " The screen," ho declares, "has leaped farther ahead in the last few years than the stage has been ame to crawl in centuries." Incidentally, he promises® by implication, some inteiesting improvements on Shakespeare, not all of them attributable, apparently, to the distinguished scenario writers who worked for three months on the script. Rather are we indebted to the stage hands. "I am overwhelmed, ' Professor Reinhardt says, "by the miracles the technicians have wrought lor me in the way of producing not only the things Shakespeare described, but the things he must have dreamed about.' These include all manner of magical effects —fairies dancing on flower petals, tripping up and down moonbeams and so forth. Professor I'einhardt is equally pleased with the actors. James Cagney's work ns Bottom is described as "astonishing," as well it may bo; in lJeinhardt's opinion, he is the best actor on the screen to-day. The music that .Mendelssohn composed for the play in the middle of last eentiirv has been adapted bv I'.rieh Wolfgang Korngold; and there is a ha I let of 200 directed by Bronislava Xijinska. The picture is" expected to be ready for showing in America by the autumn; and we are promised that "it will b<> given to the world with elaborate ceremonies, in keeping with its reputation as 'the most magnificent thing the films have yet attempted.'