Letter from New York
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (film)
On
Sunday, October 24th, the Film Society of Lincoln Center presented a one-time-only
screening of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the 1966 film
directed by George Balanchine and Dan Eriksen of Balanchine’s full-length
stage work from 1962. “I wanted to leave my own ballet, as I have
done it myself, for the future,” Balanchine told an interviewer
at the time of the film’s release. What he left was, debatably,
the most beautiful ballet film in history that takes events of the stage
as its entire subject. The version of the ballet it records is not identical
with what we see today at the State Theater, however. The choreography
is slightly different in some passages, either in tone or effect, from
what one sees now. (The film has much less for the children to do, the
Second-Act wedding scene is much more serious, and some of the entrances
and moments of transition throughout have been reconfigured for the camera.)
The design of the film’s voluptuous forest setting, far more detailed
and textured than David Hays’s original set, is attributed to Howard
Bay, a well-known designer for feature films.
And
there are elements that the stage version could never duplicate: a dreamlike
sequence when the arrow is launched into the Moly flower, the establishment
of the profiles of Titania and Oberon as two pillars framing the events
of the human characters, the instantaneous appearances and disappearances
of Puck. For the opening credits, as the overture is played, the camera
(of cinematographer Arthur J. Orbitz—known for his work with independent
dance-filmmaker Shirley Clarke) sensually traces the depths and glintingly
lit surfaces of the forest: it is more than a surrogate for the eye: it
is a hand. The ballet itself opens, though, with a deeply shadowed pair
of eyes, which turn out to belong to the Butterfly of Suki Schorer, as
if the entire proceedings were actually her vision. And the photography
of Suzanne Farrell’s Titania, with its majestic close-ups reminiscent
of silent film, produces imagery of astounding sensuousness and adoration.
Meanwhile, iconic performances unscroll. There is Ms. Farrell’s,
of course, which includes her beautiful jump; Edward Villella’s
matchless Oberon, whose beats and speed are too much for the camera: they
transform themselves into whirring magic; the aristocratic and sensually
ironic Puck of Arthur Mitchell; Ms. Schorer’s incandescent Butterfly;
the tragic, unrequited love of Mimi Paul’s Helena and the stricken
lightness of Patricia McBride’s Hermia; the perfect partnering of
Conrad Ludlow; the Valkyrean jumps and turns of Gloria Govrin; the instantaneously
registering characterization of Francisco Moncion; and, in the Second
Act divertissement, the classical purity of Allegra Kent and Jacques d’Amboise,
whose adagio, a kind of sacrament, stopped the breath of the standing-room
only crowd at the Walter Reade. Most of these performers were in the ballet’s
original cast in 1962, New ones included Ms. Farrell (who replaced the
original Titania of Melissa Hayden,, herself a pinch-hitter for Diana
Adams who inspired the creation of the part, yet never got to dance it)
and Ms. Kent (going in for the original Violette Verdy).
Of
course, you can see this film on a small monitor at the Dance Division
of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. However, you won’t
see this particular version there. The version the Film Society screened
has been color-corrected and cleaned up by Patrick Bensard, founder of
the Cinemathèque de la Danse, in Paris; and, of course, it is shown
as envisioned, on a big screen. For many years, various people have attempted
to track down the original print, whose rights the film’s producer,
Richard Davis, lost in a poker game. That original seems to have disappeared.
Bensard's version is a copy of the film as it was once screened on American
television, with the frame cropped for the tube. Furthermore,even in this
form, the film cannot be screened commercially or reproduced on VHS or
DVD, owing to the morass of legal complications regarding the ownership
of the rights. The situation is one more instance of the way
that copyright laws can work against the art form, and of the egregious
greed on the part of individuals who seek to exploit the art of ballet
for the purposes of making the quick buck.
Present at the Walter Reade were Bensard, introduced by Joanna Ney, Instigator Extraordinaire of dance-film preservation and programming, and, following the screening, several of the dancers: Suzanne Farrell, Allegra Kent, and Edward Villella, who walked up the steps to the stage holding hands in a Balanchinean chain. Ms. Farrell remembered the underground studio in the West 50’s, in which the filmmaking took place, and that she had trouble keeping completely still for the profile shot. She never saw daily rushes. Mr. Villella, who did, noted that his dances for Oberon’s ceaselessly demanding Scherzo were photographed in single takes, thanks to considerable pre-production planning of every shot, and that he "often saw Balanchine behind the camera." Ms. Kent said that she had really wanted to dance Puck. Everyone agreed that the tempo of the filmed performance was very fast, even for NYCB of the 1960s.
Two of my favorite moments in the stage version of “Midsummer” were not as effective in the film—the instant when Bottom, released from his enchantment, rediscovers his friends (so much feeling packed into a few seconds), and the moment when, near the conclusion of the ballet, as Mendelssohn’s music ascends a scale like firefighters running up a ladder in an emergency, the court skitters from side to side in urgen bourrées, as the chorreography shuffles their shifting lines like so many cards, finallly slipping the aristocrats and their brilliantly lit, ceremonial world into the wings, just in time to make room for the reemergence of the darkling forest and its creatures. Everything else is absolutely breathtaking.—Mindy Aloff
Photographs from the film courtesy of Cinemathèque de la Danse.
Originally
published:
www.danceviewtimes.com
Volume 2, Number 41
November 1, 2004
Copyright © 2004 by Mndy Aloff
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