A midsummer night's dream in our time

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Movie
Original title A midsummer night's dream in our time
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1914
length 51 (original 1913) minutes
Rod
Director Stellan Rye
script Hanns Heinz Ewers , Stellan Rye
production Hanns Heinz Ewers for Deutsche Bioscop GmbH, Berlin
camera Guido Seeber
occupation

A Midsummer Night's Dream in Our Time is a German feature film from 1914 by Stellan Rye , based on motifs from William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream .

content

The plot is largely based on Shakespeare's model, but tries to wrest the play from its theatrical quality and to make it primarily cinematic with the technical possibilities available at the time (1913) (special effects, integration of nature as a design element, the actors' joy in movement) .

The producing Bioscop advertised its production in 1913 as follows: “The great metamorphosis scenes, the fantastic spook that Shakespeare dreamed of - here in the film drama it has become reality. But it's not just fairy tale characters, but people of our day who are drawn into the mad dance of ghosts. This film drama shows that there are no longer any impossibilities of representation for the cinema and that even the most fantastic idea can take on a clearly defined form and shape. "

Production notes

A Midsummer Night's Dream in our time came into being in the summer of 1913, shortly after the silent film classic " The Student of Prague ", which marked the beginning of the fruitful collaboration between Stellan Rye and his author Hanns Heinz Ewers , and another fantastic Rye / Ewers story: " The Eyes of Ole Brandis ". Reinhardt actress Grete Berger played the leading female role in all three films .

The film was shot in the Bioscop studio in Neubabelsberg , the outdoor shots were taken near Lübbenau / Spreewald . Grete Berger, who had played the puck in Reinhardt's production of Midsummer Night's Dream at the Deutsches Theater immediately before , also portrayed the court jester Oberon in this film version.

The four-act strip passed the Berlin film censorship on October 23, 1913 and was 1,395 meters long at that time. During the First World War , A Midsummer Night's Dream in Our Time was shown in a slightly shortened version of 1299 meters. After the war, the film was radically shortened to 958 meters and was shown in this condition for children. The German premiere of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Our Time took place on March 15, 1914 in the Palais Fürstenberg in Berlin. Presumably, the film was shown in Vienna around New Year 1914 and thus premiered there.

The majority of the recordings were made at lunchtime, the actors acted without make-up. This led to light-and-shadow effects that seemed expressionistic. The nature with wind and weather was intensively involved in the film plot, the actors often appeared in close-ups and acted in constant motion in front of the camera.

The film is considered lost, only a few still images survived the wars.

reception

During the shooting of the film there were several reports, articles appeared and others. a. in Lichtbild-Bühne No. 28 and No. 39 as well as in Der Kinematograph No. 342 (all 1913).

Hanns Heinz Ewers saw the work he wrote as a further development of the fantastic cinema - a film genre that he and Rye had launched shortly before with "The Student of Prague" - and its technical possibilities, but wanted its story in the original German as well Knowing the tradition of the fairy tale. In "Das Lichtbild-Theater" he wrote:

“In the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' I then tried out the specific expressive possibilities of the cinema in every direction and showed how the greatest transformation scenes and fairy tale moods become reality in film drama. While the stage can only express the dreams of the poet with the use of scenic means, in the cinema a fantastic idea takes on concrete form and shape in such a way that the viewer receives the impression of absolute natural truth. "

- Hanns Heinz Ewers: "Development opportunities"

Vienna's Neue Freie Presse stated briefly in the edition of January 4, 1914: "With this piece, the authors have created a funny moonlit night game full of jokes and high spirits."

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ printed in: Der Kinematograph No. 353 of October 1, 1913
  2. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 1: A - C. Erik Aaes - Jack Carson. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 341.
  3. ↑ Picture and Film, Volume 3/5, Mönchengladbach 1913/14
  4. ^ In Das Lichtbild-Theater, Volume 5/39, from September 25, 1913
  5. ↑ "A Midsummer Night's Dream in Our Time". In:  Neue Freie Presse , January 4, 1914, p. 28 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp

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