How do you take a play by Shakespeare, a talented cast, and then stage, shoot, and edit it so horribly? It suffers from the 1960's avant-guard compulsion to shoot everything hand-held, including static close-ups. The film has been edited to be almost entirely in close-up, hardly ever giving us a visual rest with a medium shot or wide-shot. Very static staging -- which again makes me wonder why they felt compelled to shoot hand-held all the time. The best thing you can do with this production is cover the screen and just listen to the language. Diana Rig is one of my favorite actresses (what adolescent boy of that time didn't have dreams about Ema Peel?) but she is totally wasted here. I hate to continue trashing this film, as I think I've said all there is to be said concisely already.
Review of A Midsummer Night's Dream
