ENORMOUS LENGTH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 168, 20 July 1935, Page 14

ENORMOUS LENGTH

“MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM” HERR REINHARDT’S TROUBLES. The Herr-proi’Cabor Hvinhardt. who in 1925 said, “1 am not interested i u tile motion picture; it is a dangerous parasite of the theatre, of literature afnd other arts,” has been busy cut ting down “A Midsummer Night s Dream” 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 lender care that he has given every angle of the ‘Dream’ since early last autumn, when preparation was begun for the cellifloiding of the spectacle which he had presented so tnumpaantiy in the open air at the Hollywood Bowl.’’ “The Teuton maestro” —one finds the temptation to yuote 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 case 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

speed limit of 90ft. a minute, which would give the maestro’s work a running time of three days and ten hours. Ibis 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 thy movies. “The screen,’’ he declares, “has leaped farther ahead in the last few years than the stage Jias been able to crawl in centuries.” Incidentally, he promises, by implication, some interesting 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 indebiro to the stage hands. “1 am overwhelmed,” Professor Reinhardt says, “by the miracles the technicians have wrougnt for me in the way of producing not only the things Shakespeare described, but the things he must have dreamed about.’ These include all manner ol' magicai effects—-fairies dancing on Hower petals, flipping up and down moonbeams and so forth. Professor Reinhardt is equally pleased with the actors. James Cagney's work as Bottom is described as “'astonishing.’’ as well it may be; .n Reinhardt’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 century has been adapted by Ericn Wolfgang Korngold; and there is a ballet of 200 directed by Bronislava Ni jin ska. The picture is expected to be ready for showing in America by the autumn; and we arc promised that “it will be given to the world with eh'bo-rate ceremonies, in keeping with its reputation n.w ‘thp most magnificent thing the films have yet attempted.’ ”