A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy

Perhaps not for the slow-witted: the bucolic cinematography, perfectly wedded to the Mendelssohn score, takes its time; the turn-of-the-century debate on science, while an effective springboard for the sexual focus, is not glossed over for the impatient and the script focuses its wit and insight into relationships at the expense of a potentially-expected series of one-liners. In this palimpsest on Bergman's Sommarnattens Leende, Woody gets to create a magical, self-contained environment for the dialogues and indiscretions. Like a feelgood Bunuel film, this will not please zeitgeist-watchers in the same way as Annie Hall, but in its treatment of theme and woody beauty, remains easily that film's peer - and one of his best.

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982) A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982) was written and directed by Woody Allen. Allen also stars in his iconic role as a more-or-less decent guy with the ability to say or do the wrong thing in almost any situation. Woody has surrounded himself with talent in this film. Jose Ferrer plays the pompous professor Leopold, and Tony Roberts plays the "fast" doctor Maxwell, who is Allen's best friend. The real clout comes from the female actors: Mia Farrow is Ariel--engaged to Leopold, but maybe in love with Woody, or maybe even with Roberts. Julie Hagerty plays Dulcy, a young but not-so-innocent nurse who has accompanied Maxwell for the weekend. Mary Steenburgen portrays Allen's wife Adrian, who has become frigid for reasons that she knows but we don't. Shakespeare realized the potential of midsummer's night for fantasy and for love, and so did Ingmar Bergman in his film "Smiles of a Summer Night." Allen has never been afraid of taking on a challenge, and he maintains the tradition with a script where almost every man wants almost every woman, and vice-versa. The film is all about love, and all about sex. However, because it's rated PG-13, you know that there won't be any on-screen nudity. Actors talk about sex, they arrange secret meetings and talk about sex some more, but we never see them without multi-layered early-1900's clothing. That's OK--this movie is about the chase, not the consummation. The film contains some beautiful scenery, so it would work marginally better on a large screen, but it was certainly satisfactory on DVD. Incidentally, the soundtrack is composed entirely of music by Felix Mendelssohn. You may not realize that Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream contains a melody we hear all the time. You'll recognize it instantly.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SEX COMEDY was Woody Allen's amusing variation on the Ingmar Bergman classic SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT, which had been previously re-worked as a Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim called A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC. This film is about three couples in turn of the century who gather at one of their country homes for the weekend and it is clear at the beginning of the story that these three couples are hopelessly mismatched and we see the very human foibles that split up and mix up these three couples during this memorable weekend in the country. Woody and Mary Steenburgen plays the hosts for the weekend, a seemingly happily married couple whose happiness is clearly surface deep. Tony Roberts plays a womanizing physician and Woody's best pal who arrives for the weekend with his nurse (Julia Hagerty). In her first screen pairing with Woody Allen, Mia Farrow plays a former flame of Woody's who has arrived with her much older fiancée (Jose Ferrer) who she is scheduled to marry on Monday. Watching these three couples fuss and fumble all over each other in an attempt to be with the person they really want to be with is what makes this charming period comedy work. As always in Woody's films, music is crucial in setting the mood and Woody has chosen some classic Mendelsohhn pieces that set the perfect mood for the piece. The performances are uniformly fine, with Roberts a standout. Not one of Woody's better known films, but if you'd like to see where his relationship with Mia began, take a look.

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982) As long as you don't mind making light of deception, adultery, and plain old cheating on your wife and lover, this is a really well constructed, fast, brilliantly written film. Woody Allen, by nature, has some combination of striving for depths and avoiding them by silliness that is beguiling. It's really fun to see one of his "entertainments" like this (as opposed to his all out comedies or his more serious films) because it carves out an ingenious, lovable world where you don't have to worry about a thing for an hour and a half. There is surprising humor (of course), sight gags and turns of phrase, and the absurdity of situation. But there is also a layer of despair at the universe, too, which is like pepper in the sugar. Now Allen is a director as much as a writer (both, never forget) and he makes movies fluid, visually tight, and fresh in spirit. And he does this in part because he gets great actors and he gets them to perform at their best. That's part of what a great director does, inspiring and making the most of everyone. Here we have Mia Farrow, who is her usual meek intelligent self, and a counterpart, an echo really, played to perfect pitch by Mary Steenburgen. But even more astonishing really is the arrogant, prolix professor played by Jose Ferrar, who never cracks from his erudite Victorianism. And there is Allen himself, playing the same kind of neurotic, feeling, questioning man he is so good at. So there is nothing her not to like. Toss in the parallels to Shakespeare, an homage to Bergman, and the use of Mendelssohn for music (a switch for Allen), and you have a movie that would stand up to studying. Not that it needs study. It's too slight and frivolous to worry much about, and it gets downright ridiculous (or puerile) at times, so don't worry beyond having fun. For some, it might be too affected, and it might have too many lines that seem obvious, or are played with a kind of falseness when genuine intensity might be welcome. But not really. It's a set piece, a play held flat by celluloid, an overly controlled contrivance, a highly successful resolution of intention. When it's done, you won't be changed, you won't cry, but you'll feel good, and will have a good laugh or two to remember. Years later: I have to admit this movie just clicks with me, and every time I watch it I'm aware it's a completely frivolous, minor effort. But I really like it anyway, and I think it has some sparkling lines, really funny comic comeback and expressions. The movie is also one of the famous set of nearly flawless films shot for Allen by the great cinematographer Gordon Willis. The premise here is simple—three mismatched couples get together for a weekend in the country. (Note here—Allen famously hates the country, and this feels like upstate New York in spirit.) We not only see the quirks in the relationships that exist, we see the attempts at new matches in a kind of grab bag of infidelity. That part of the movie is silly and fun. The other theme here is sort of serious, though in comic clothes. And that's whether there is life after death, or a world of spirits in any way. The answer is Allen's wishful one: yes. But he can only approach it in this kind of fantasy, because in the real world he believes otherwise (from what I read). So this is just a postscript after yet another fun viewing. Short and funny.

Woody Allen's spoof of Ingmar Bergman's "Smiles of a Summer Night" is one of his weaker efforts. Mia Farrow can be a wonderful actress, but she's just not the go-to person for comedy, and Allen would have done better to stick with her for his more serious work only. Even not very good Allen films, though, are good for a one-liner here and there, and "A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy" does deliver there. There aren't enough to make up for the film's stupid ending, but there are enough to make it possible to sit through. With this film, Allen was in a bit of a holding pattern between his excellent films from the 1970s and his fertile period in the mid-1980s. Grade: C

Bummer that many of the key scenes at midnight (even with a full moon) looked pretty much the same as the afternoon. Also bummer that the first half of the film is slow and muddled. Only once the the whole farce is set up do things really get going. And the ending isn't so hot. But the pretty fine middle makes up for it. Fun watching these pre-TV people entertain themselves- archery and singing the Lord's Prayer (!) included. Woody's wit makes up for his lacklustre direction in this one, and Mia Farrow is kinda wooden. "Lesser" is a key adjective tossed at this film, but, hey, the crumbs of giants and all that. Rating: 5 out of 10 (average).

I think I see what Woody Allen was getting at here -- a kind of salubrious combination of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and Ingmar Bergman's "Smiles of a Summer Night." A handful of real or aspiring intellectuals spend a weekend in a country estate just after the turn of the last century. (And what a cast they are!) Some of them know one another and others are strangers. All are distinguishable in one way or another. Jose Ferrer is the snooty man of science who doesn't believe in spirits or spiritual lives. Tony Roberts is the naturalist and doctor who is more interested in leaves than science. Mia Farrow is Ariel (another nod to Shakespeare), an old love of Allen's who is about to marry the older Ferrer on Monday. Mary Steenburgen is Allen's wife who is concerned that their marriage is going stale and asks the other women about the best way to please a man in bed. Roberts falls for Farrow. So does Allen. Ferrer wants to make it with Julie Haggarty. Assignations are clumsily arranged and then fall apart for one or another reason. The guests see visions of fairies when they stare at a spirit ball. Globular lights dance around among the trees. Well, I'm all for enchanted forests. The folklore of northern Europe is itself enchanted. "Fairy rings" formed of mushrooms and all that. That this movie didn't work for me -- it might well work for others -- is because I simply couldn't care about any of the characters. And the conversational exchanges were only mildly comic. Without characters to care about, lacking a winsome sweetness, and without real laughs, what's left? The usual congeries of Allen's neurotic New York intellectuals falling in love with the wrong people and at odds with one another. Best performance -- and best scene -- go to Jose Ferrer singing lugubrious German Lieder while Steenburgen pounds on the piano. Woody has the good sense to look at the camera (twice) with a mournful expression. But the story is more confusing than enchanting. I understand Woody wrote the screenplay in two weeks, and I believe it.

Despite being one of Woody's lesser works this film still succeeds to entertain. The sight of Woody on a flying bicycle is worth watching the film alone, as is the wonderful scenery. Despite not having an outstanding script, though good by anyone else's standards, Woody's take on Bergman & Shakespeare's tale is a success that makes the summer seem like a magical time of escapism and hope. Woody succeeds in the modern take on the Shakespearian theme of confusion & love and manages to make a warm and pleasant film

Review: I really wasn't that impressed with this movie because I didn't find it that funny or slightly interesting. The concept, which is basically about a group of friends who lust over each other in the wilderness, got a bit tedious after a while and Woody Allen's weak jokes and silly characters didn't have any depth or substance. The fact that everyone is lusting over Mia Farrow, didn't help because I really couldn't see what was so adorable about her. Woody Allen, who plays a mad inventor, was also quite annoying after a while and he just seemed to be running around, setting up rendezvous's with the different characters. The whole look and feel of the movie was quite dated and the storyline goes down some weird avenues that go a bit too far. Disappointing! Round-Up: With only one movie left in this Woody Allen series, I still haven't seen anything that amazing from this accomplished writer/director and I personally think that the movies with Diane Keaton are much better than the Mia Farrow ones. All of his films seem very similar to one another and the concepts, which are usually based around troubled relationships set in New York, aren't that imaginative. Before I got into this filmography, I was hoping to see the mind behind his unique work, but all I have seen is that he is definitely one for the ladies and he loves writing about relationships which are in turmoil, which shadows his own life in his latter years. Because I watched these films back to back, I honestly got fed up with them after a while and his humour is for a certain crowd which I am not part of. Budget: N/A Round-Up: $9million I recommend this movie to people who are into there Woody Allen movies about a group of friends who get together in the wilderness and end up lusting for each other. 3/10

Every now and then for the last couple of decades I have taken the occasional look at a Woody Allen film (with as open a mind as I can muster) in an attempt to work out what it is that people seem to adore about him so much. Having just read an extended magazine interview with the man in which he came over as a genuinely likeable human being I thought I was in a good place to have another go at finding what 'it' is. Whatever it is I didn't see it here. You would have thought with a title like 'A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy' there would have been some sex or comedy in it. Apart from one throwaway line line delivered near the end of the thing which was genuinely funny - more for the delivery rather than the content - the film didn't raise a smile! And the sex was endless talk about off- screen activity and a couple of 'humorous' on-screen sub Benny Hill fumbles. I remember hearing an interview with Jack Lemmon, many years ago, in which he said that when Billy Wilder was directing him in a scene in 'Some Like it Hot' Wilder gave him a pair of maracas to hold, and told him to shake them after Tony Curtis said his line and stop before he delivered his own. Lemmon was perplexed. The scene's dialogue was a snappy and rapidfire to and fro interchange. The maraca shaking would slow it down to a crawl. But Wilder was the director and Lemmon did what he was told. When Lemmon saw the film with an audience he understood. Curtis' s line were funny. So were Lemmons'. If Lemmon had come in with his line as soon as his actor's instincts told him to, the audience would not have heard it because they were still laughing at Curtis's previous line. His line would have been lost. Curtis's next line would make no sense... and the scene would have collapsed like a house of cards. Wilder knew where the laughs were and built space into his direction to let the audience enjoy them. Allen doesn't leave any space for the audience. We're not given any space to get the' jokes' (such as they are) because there's always someone talking straight after them. What they are saying is usually inane piffle and by the time you've registered that what they are saying is of little consequence and not a zinging comeback (if was generous I could concede that a lot of the inconsequential dialogue here is Allen's carefully crafted, verbal equivalent of maraca shaking) any humour in the 'joke' that just went past has evaporated. The less said about Allen's helpless, "oh look at me,I'm so clumsy" shtick the better. I'll give it a couple of years and have another go and seeing what the Allen cultist adore so much.