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Rating:  - Four Stars for the Stars
I had this film on video and the transfer was horrible.
Yes, the dialogue is read faster than the cast of the original horror flick THE THING could've done it, the green makeup of the fairies comes and goes like sunscreen...but this film is worth seeing for the cast alone.
Diana Rigg is as sexy as she ever was as Mrs. Emma Peel from "The Avengers" or Mrs. James Bond in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE.
Judi Dench, who would become 007's boss "M" in the Pierce Brosnan Bond films, runs around in green paint and pasties. If the crew of the Enterprise had beamed down into this production, Captain Kirk would've added another hot green chick to his list of conquests (alongside Yvonne Craig).
David Warner, an actor whose career goes from THE OMEN to TIME BANDITS to TRON to TITANIC, plays one of the "human" leads.
Helen Mirren looks like she just got out of high school--so young and fresh and pretty! She would go on to many sexy roles. One of the weirdest ones was THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER.
And Ian Holm, perhaps best remembered as the milk-sweating android from the original ALIEN, plays a hyper, twitching fairy. He was also great in THE SWEET HEREAFTER and in the Mel Gibson version of HAMLET.
Any one of these actors would've been worth watching in a Shakespearean production...but to have them all?
Definitely worth watching.
Rating:  - As I remembered it.
I first saw this film in the '60s and was glad to have it again. Excellent DVD.
Rating: - Shakespeare in a Nehru jacket?
Allowing for the albeit distracting 1968-isms (i.e. leather mini skirts and Beatles-style haircuts) this is a first rate version of Shakespeare's magical play. Featuring a cast of amazing stars including Helen Mirren and Diana Rigg as Hermia and Helena, Judy Dench (quite scantily clad) as Titania, the velvet-voiced Ian Richardson as Oberon and the impish Iam Holm as Puck, this version successfully portrays the combination of humor, magic and the absurdities of young love ("Lord, what fools these mortals be!") inherent in Shakespeare's play. The high-speed camera work and overabundance of green face paint can be a bit distracting, but the brilliance of Bottom and the "rude mechanicals", the careful balancing of the magical and the real and the faithful and articulate delivery of Shakespeare's gorgeous language more than compensate for any eccentricities of film-craft. Listening to Oberon's beautiful soliloquies ("I know a bank where the wild thyme blows...") delivered with such beauty and grace by Ian Richardson is worth the price of admission all by itself! Give Peter Hall's MND a try!
Rating: - Overwhelming Star Power.
The film source materials start off looking battered, but the image cleans up pretty quickly.
More importantly, the performances are uniformly strong, without a weak link to be found. If you are familiar with Ian Richardson and Judy Dench only from their recent work, this movie will be an eye-opener. Bill Travers' Snout is a treasure, and Paul Rogers leaves behind his usual kings and bullies to give a vocally astonishing performance as Bottom.
Most productions of this play have trouble balancing the scenes of the confused lovers in the forest with the Pyramis and Thisbe farce at the end - usually one or the other gets out of control, but this one gets it right for once. There is a little self-conscious film editing a la Richard Lester and the New Wave that has dated, but doesn't really kill the occasion. The language and atmosphere are magical, as good as it gets.
Some of the whining in these reviews is silly. There is no other Midsummer Night's Dream so evenly and superlatively cast, and it's worth putting up with less than optimal print quality to watch and listen to them.
Rating:  - the movie itself is worth seeing
it sounds like they did a pretty crummy job transferring this film to dvd but i must put two cents in for the film itself. i think all the actors are wonderful and the trippy look and feel are appropriate and fun. the production of the play by Nick Bottom and the 'rude mechanicals' is laugh-out-loud funny. very much worth seeing, in my opinion. plus it features the young and lovely helen mirren, the young, lovely and naked judi dench, miss peel from The Avengers and the guy who gets his head cut off in The Omen. i give the film 4 stars, subtracting one for the poor quality of the transfer (that i've read about).
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