A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) on Netflix
NR19352h 23mComedyFantasyRomance
Hermia loves Lysander, but her father Egeus has chosen Demetrius for her and brings an Athenian law before Duke Theseus. She and Lysander flee to a forest where Oberon quarrels with Titania.
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Trailer
Plot summary
In Athens, Hermia's father Egeus has chosen Demetrius as her husband, but Hermia is in love with Lysander. Egeus brings an ancient Athenian law before Duke Theseus, which says a daughter must accept the suitor her father chooses or die, and Theseus offers her a chaste life as a worshipper of Diana instead. Hermia and Lysander slip away to the forest to elope. Demetrius pursues them, and Helena, who wants Demetrius, follows. There Oberon, king of the fairies, argues with his queen Titania; she will not give up an Indian changeling boy, and he tells his jester Puck to fetch a flower whose juice makes a sleeping person love the first creature seen on waking. Peter Quince and his players gather to rehearse a play about Pyramus and Thisbe.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Mickey Rooney broke his leg while tobogganing at Big Pines, California, during production. Because the film was too expensive to delay, his remaining running and elfin scenes were shot with a stand-in, George Breakston, with foliage concealing the broken leg and holes cut in the floor.
- The film was banned in Nazi Germany by the Ministry of Propaganda, because Joseph Goebbels deemed its German-expressionist style degenerate art and, even more so, because director Max Reinhardt was of Jewish ancestry.
- Cinematographer Hal Mohr was not even nominated for the film but won the Oscar through a grass-roots write-in campaign, after which the Academy stopped accepting write-in votes. It was Mohr who had the trees sprayed with orange paint for the eerie fairyland glow.
- Cinemas contracting to show the film could pull out before screening it, and while cancellations usually ran between 20 and 50, this film set a new record with 2,971 of them after booking agents failed to correctly identify it.
- Director Max Reinhardt did not speak English while making the film. He gave orders to the actors and crew in Austrian German while fellow refugee and longtime collaborator William Dieterle acted as his interpreter.
- Dick Powell, then in his Hollywood crooner phase, reportedly realized he was completely wrong for the role of Lysander and asked to be taken off the film, to no avail.
- The film's artwork, scenery, costumes and lighting were a big influence on Lucile Hadžihalilović's 2025 film The Ice Tower, and its costumes also inspired the dress worn by the Snow Queen in that film.
