clanciai Review of As You Like It

As You Like It (1936)

One of Shakespeare's most delightful plays made more than justice

[10/10 · 27 July 2020]

This is very much in the same style as Max Reinhardt's ambitious rendering of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" a few years earlier, it's the same playfulness, the same fantastic imagination and innovations, the same good humour and the same kind of gorgeous sets with a number of sumptuous crowd scenes, and instead of Mendelssohn's music you have William Walton, who actually proves just as appropriate. This is one of those plays that are almost impossible to fail in, as it is so ingenious and well written with such adorable characters, and both Elisabeth Bergner and Laurence Olivier do credit to them indeed, Bergner actually almost outshining Olivier, whose fírst Shakespeare film this was. In comparison with Kenneth Branagh's version 70 years later, this is actually so much more enoyable, although it's without colours and much shorter, but Branagh's production is heavier, he has the tendency to always overdo everything in his films, and in this version everything is convincing and true to the original character of the play, while Branagh always must modernize and almost screw it up. The doiminating trait of the film is a very playful direction, you feel throughout that the director enjoyed doing this, perhaps even more than Reinhardt in the midsummer night play with Mickey Rooney as Puck and James Cagney as Bottom, and later on Paul Czinner made some of the best ballet films ever made. In brief, in spite of its early age and lack of technical maturity, this is a perfect Shakespeare film.