A Midsummer Night's Dream (1969)

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Movie
German title A midsummer night's dream
Original title Le songe d'une nuit d'été
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1969
length 140 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Jean-Christophe Averty
script Jean-Christophe Averty
music Jean-Claude Pelletier
camera Claude Galland
occupation

A Midsummer Night's Dream (French. Le songe d'une nuit d'été ) is a French TV film from 1969, based on the eponymous play A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare , directed by Jean-Christophe Averty .

The mixture of real and animated films was first broadcast in Germany on December 22, 1971 on the broadcasters WDR , BR and SFB . It ran on HR3 on May 20, 1972, and on NDR on January 14, 1973.

action

The four lovers Hermia, Helena, Lysander and Demetrius flee from their parents' marriage plans to the forest near Athens. Bad assumption, because Helena's fiancé Demetrius has fallen in love with Hermia. Since Helena wants to win her Demetrius back, she reveals the escape plan. Now the four wander through the thicket in the realm of the elves. There a dispute between the elven couple Oberon and Titania causes plenty of entanglements. Because a magic potion, accidentally dripped into the wrong eyes by the forest spirit Puck, makes the young men Lysander and Demetrius fall in love with the creature they see first when they wake up. Now both are vying for the previously unloved Helena. Hermia again becomes jealous of the girlfriend. Standing between the envious Hermia and the amorous galans, Helena begins to despair. While the young people argue, some craftsmen get lost in the forest. One of them is used by Oberon to play a prank on Titania too. She falls in love with a craftsman who Oberon has put on a donkey's head. Oberon clears up the chaos by sending the Athens love quartet to sleep one more time ...

background

A Midsummer Night's Dream is an early work in video art . France's most successful TV show director at the time, Jean-Christophe Averty, had his actors, most of them internationally known film stars such as Claude Jade , Christine Delaroche , Jean-Claude Drouot , Christiane Minazzoli and Marie Versini , play in front of a blue screen and let the Athens Forest and the Palace arise in a mixture of frescoes and hypnotic play of colors. The sizes of the actors also change, for example wandering in long shots in front of the closeup of their partners or emerging from paintings in vases. Averty exhausted all the technical possibilities of the time.

In the troop of craftsmen u. a. the comedian duo Michel Modo and Guy Grosso , known as Berlicot and Tricart from the gendarme films with Louis de Funès .

criticism

Maurice Clavel from the Nouvel Observateur celebrated the work as a perfectly harmonious and aesthetic science and compared the frenzy of images with a galaxy. Another wonder of the film he counted was the rapid portrayal of actress Claude Jade as Helena. Le Monde declares the TV film "Chef d'oeuvre" and France Soir speaks of an epoch-making date and a revolution in the history of directing . When it came to the first German broadcast, WDR said: "Averty, who would be more likely to be accused of having too many than too few ideas, has created a colorful phantasmagoria, against which categories such as art, applied arts or kitsch fail."

Filmdienst: "In the forest in front of Athens a game of confusion develops between the elf king and his wife, into which four young lovers and a group of craftsmen are drawn. French television adaptation of the often adapted play by William Shakespeare, which is made possible by the inclusion of innovative video techniques and the imaginative Equipment and use of assembly techniques broke new ground in the late 1960s. "

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