Credited cast: | |||
Joss Ackland | ... | Quince (voice) | |
Ann Bell | ... | Hermia (voice) | |
Richard Burton | ... | Narrator | |
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Tom Criddle | ... | Lysander (voice) |
Jean Desailly | ... | Récitant / Narrator (French version) (voice) | |
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Laura Graham | ... | Hippolyta (voice) |
Jack Gwillim | ... | Oberon (voice) | |
Barbara Jefford | ... | Titania (voice) | |
Barbara Leigh-Hunt | ... | Helena (voice) | |
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Hugh Manning | ... | Theseus (voice) |
Alec McCowen | ... | Bottom (voice) | |
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Michael Meacham | ... | Demetrius (voice) |
Stephen Moore | ... | Flute (voice) | |
Rudolf Pellar | ... | Narrator (original Czech version) (as R. Pellar) | |
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Roger Shepherd | ... | Puck (voice) |
The first puppet kinescope in the world. It is based on the famous poetic comedy by William Shakespeare. Three worlds meet in this story: the noble world of three Athens couples, a common popular world of tradesmen amateur theatre and a fairy-tale happiness of magic creatures as elves and nymphs. The film is considered the most remarkable Jirí Trnka's work and a milestone in the history of the world animation. Written by KrátkýFilm
In my opinion Czech puppet animator JIRI TRNKA outdid himself when he created this version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream".This film's aesthetic beauty is only superceded by it's technical excellence for clearly TRNKA had moved away from his earlier techniques and developed a new one.
In his film "The Emperor's Nightingale" the puppets were silent, as actors were silent in the days before talkies. But in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" the puppet's were silent in the way that actors in mime, or ballet dancers are silent.
There was also a basic difference in expression: In the first film the movement was symbolic,in the second, the action was expressed through the language of mime.
All in all... a triumph of stop-motion cinema.
Steve Weber The Laughing Egg Studio