Episode 56: A Midsummer Night's Dream

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

David: Suzan, I might have gotten slightly  drunk watching this movie over the course of like four hours.

Suzan: I mean, I didn’t, because I don’t drink, but I definitely felt like I had ingested some bad bread mold and was hallucinating.

This week, our hosts Shakespeare-nerd out pretty hard for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A German expressionistic adaptation of the play, directed by a man who literally didn’t speak English, starring James Cagney as a surprisingly fantastic Bottom, Olivia de Havilland as Hermia, Dick Powell as a dreadful Lysander, and a 14-year-old Mickey Rooney in the most enraging performance maybe ever committed to film. Suzan gets frustrated trying to find an accurate enough simile to convey just how bad Puck is, while David apologizes at least half a dozen times for his deep dive into the textual details.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1935 (Nominated)

Additional audio: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)

(Explicit language, as always)