Max Reinhardt(1873-1943)
- Additional Crew
- Director
- Writer
Max Reinhardt was from an Austrian merchant family (surname officially
changed from the family name Goldmann to Reinhardt in 1904), and even
as a boy, after his family moved to Vienna, he haunted the "Hofburg
Theater" and tried to see every play. In 1890 he studied at the
Sulkowsky Theater in Matzleinsdorf and started acting in Vienna and
later at the "Stadtheater" in Salzburg with duties as an assistant
director. But by 1894 he was invited to Berlin by Otto Brahm, director,
critic, and theater manager. And that was an important juncture. Brahm
had founded the "Free Stage" (1890), a theater company crusading for
realism in German theater by providing a forum for so-called banned
plays - the iconoclastic works, such as, those of Henrik Ibsen and Leo
Tolstoy. The result was the opening of German state theater to the
corpus of the modern stage by 1894. Brahm became director of the
Deutsches Theater in Berlin, and there Reinhardt cut his teeth on the
full theater experience, not simply acting alone, although he was much
applauded for his convincing specialty of playing old men.
In 1901 Reinhardt co-founded his own - sort of avant garde - cabaret
"Schall und Rauch" (Sound and Smoke) for experimental theater. It was
renamed "Kleines Theater" (Small Theater) in 1902, a place for
contemporary plays accented with the sort of spirit confined to cabaret
entertainment. He then opened and managed his own theater "Neues
Theater", now called the "Berliner Ensemble", from 1902 to 1905. These
were all a part of his evolving philosophy of the harmony of stage
design, costumes, language, music, and choreography as a whole unified
artwork, Gesamtkunstwerk. He was influenced by several figures, August
Strindberg for one, but most significantly by Richard Wagner and his
operatic ideal that the director must pull together all aspects of art
in his production. Reinhardt's infusion gave new dimensions to German
theater. After producing more than fifty plays at Neues Theater,
wherein he always found somebody to donate the money for productions,
he was asked to take the helm of Deutsches Theater in Berlin for Brahm
in 1905. At Deutsches Theater he embarked on big theater, employing the
whole physical theater space for productions and often even spreading
scenes into the audience as a means of fusing actors and audience in a
total theater experience. Here was something different - making theater
a democratic institution - after all the audience was the means of
generating the money to do more. And Reinhardt was never avant garde
enough to disdain making profit when it finally came knocking. He
staged truly gargantuan productions of epic pageantry and lighting with
stark colors for various dramatic effects. He staged one of his most
famous early productions, his first rendition of Shakespeare's "A
Midsummer Night's Dream" with a wooded forest revolving stage - turning
to reveal progressive new scenes. He became famous for realistic
direction of huge crowd and mob scenes.
He built the smaller Kammerspiele, a theater near Deutsches Theater in
1906. At this latter theater Reinhardt developed "Kammerspiel" theater,
chamber dramas in a minimalist and naturalistic style. This followed
from his expressionist influences which defied the realist dictum
(though he would look to realism as well in the mix to appropriately
stage some of his most ambitious efforts) and sought out more personal,
expressive, and emphatic ways of coaxing the elements of theater from
the conventional objective into palpable subjectivity. This all opened
Reinhardt to even more experimental ideas in staging with sometimes
nightmarish and vivid lighting techniques. He began introducing the
expressionist plays to the German-speaking public. And he also opened a
famous acting school which would function for decades turning out many
of Germany's great actors and actresses. In addition there was a acting
troupe that played in neutral areas of Europe during World War I. On
the bill was always a cycle of Shakespeare plays. Reinhardt did
everything in a big way and to accommodate a growing enthusiastic
theater-going public he had expanded with a chain of theaters
throughout Germany. He would manage thirty theaters and acting
companies in all.
Reihardt fulfilled another of his ideals, and that was of finding the
'perfect playhouse' as a means of complementing the content and
experience of a play. In 1919 he opened an enormous arena theater, the
"Grosses Schauspielhaus", (Great Playhouse), but known as the "Theatre
of the Five Thousand", which included a large revolving stage. Many of
his biggest productions were done here, including Shakespeare and Greek
plays. In the 1920s he built the two Boulevard Theaters on the
Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. And yet, the privations of post-war Germany
and the perennial anti-Semitic undercurrent caused a gradual loss of
his big audiences. In 1920 Reinhardt went back to Salzburg and
established the Salzburg Festival with composer Richard Strauss and
playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Annually he enjoyed staging the most
apropos of morality plays, the medieval "Everyman", with the biggest
set he could muster as a backdrop-the Austrian Alps in the open air
before the Salzburg Cathedral. From 1924 he became director of the
Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna and renewed his Berlin popularity
with a new theater called "Komoedie". His output was no less than
astounding. Whereas a theater director today would not commit himself
beyond two or three productions in a year, Reinhardt averaged twenty in
his first twelve years. Between 1916 and 1917 he produced 48 - his
highest output. Although he did few films, he was very interested in
the potential of the medium. He directed four silent movies starting in
1910. One of these was the filming of one his favorite pantomime plays
"The Miracle".
Reinhardt was a titan of influence and inspiration on a whole
generation of theater and film directors in Germany-many who spread the
word to the rest of the world. His disciples included: F.W. Murnau,
Paul Leni, Ernst Lubitsch, William Dieterle , and Otto Preminger. His staging of crowds and use
of lighting were frequently appropriated by the great silent filmmakers
of the Weimar Republic, including 'Fritz Lang' and Murnau. And he profoundly
influenced the expressionist movement in German film. He also
influenced many actors with his techniques of developing expressive
characterizations and movement-many would eventually come to New York
and Hollywood. But by 1933 Hitler had come to power, and Reinhardt
found himself falling victim to the same methods of attrition as other
German Jews. So-called assimilative families of ethnic mixtures,
whether high or low, were increasing placed in the same category as
ethnic Jews. His theaters were `appropriated' one-by-one by the
government and later his considerable properties confiscated. Later in
1933 he moved back to Austria to the "Theater in der Josefstadt" in
Vienna (where Preminger had quickly become a director), hoping his
native land could resist the Nazi machine. But the same pressures
enveloped him there. He left for a last theater tour of Europe and
arrived in America in 1934. "Midsummer" had a special significance for
Reinhardt. The play was his continued inspiration of a world without
ideologies - a utopia - as the theater itself was a haven from the
harsh realities of the world and of the individual. The audience
learned something, but they also could steep themselves without taxing
imagination in the illusion of theater. "Midsummer" was always a
work-in-progress for him - he had staged it twelve times up to 1934,
and in fact had already brought it to Broadway in late 1927. And that
was not his first trip to the US, having started presenting plays as
producer, director, or writer since early 1912 there (he did ten
productions in all to 1943).
He came to Hollywood in 1934 with his fame preceding him. His last tour
through Europe had included lavish productions in Florence (1933) and
a"Midsummer" at Oxford (1934). He offered to do the same in Hollywood
at an ideal outdoor stage-the Hollywood Bowl. But the bowl had to go -
it was removed to provide a view of a "forest" up the hillside - a
"forest" that required tons of dirt hauled in especially for its
planting, Reinhardt and his design staff erected a 250-foot wide,
100-foot deep stage. Also included was a pond and a suspension bridge
or trestle constructed from the hills in back to the stage to be lined
with torchbearers - with real flaming torches - for the wedding
procession inserted between Acts IV and V. This lavish production
included a ballet corps, children playing faeries, and hundreds of
extras. The 18-year-old Olivia de Havilland was at Mills College in Oakland,
participating in a school "Midsummer" production where in attendance
was none other than Max Reinhardt himself. He was so impressed with her
that he picked her for his extravaganza. Along with other Hollywood
actors, was 14 year old veteran of the cinema 'Mickey Rooney', added to the
cast as Puck. Another new arrival from Austria was classical opera
composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, musical collaborator of Reinhardt's from Vienna.
Reinhardt cabled his friend to come over and help him by doing the
orchestrations of Felix Mendelssohn's famous 1843 music for the
Hollywood Bowl production. It was a night to remember - even for
Jack L. Warner - who was not always sure of what he was seeing. But it was
enough to sign Reinhardt to direct a filmed version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) which
began shooting in December of 1934. De Havilland was back to start her
film career-Rooney for another memorable part. Otherwise, it was new
cast headed by Hollywood stars 'Dick Powell' and James Cagney and boasting the
best actors from Warner's impressive stock company of players. Since
Reinhardt did not know Hollywood filmmaking, Warner assigned a
co-director, William Dieterle, Reinhardt's acting then directing
protege, from the Deutsches Theater days in Berlin. Dieterle, the
disciple, had directed in Germany since 1923 and then came to Hollywood
to become one of the studio's most reliable new directors. It was the
beginning of Korngold's screen career as a film composer when he was
hired to do the film score, an arrangement based on Mendelssohn's music
used at the Bowl. But he actually mixed in much more of a variety of
the composer's music to fit the play. Warner's laid down 1.5 million
dollars and had its top technical staff step up to the challenge. But
all-most of all, Reinhardt - was on a bit of a learning curve.
Reinhardt was allowed the liberty of long play-like rehearsals instead
of rehearsing scene by scene. Reinhardt's early over-emphasized stage
acting directions were recalled by Cagney, who noted the actors often
stood around on the sidelines whispering to one another, "Somebody
ought to tell him." It was the politic Dieterle who did - setting his
old master straight as to the subtle wonders of the microphone and
sound film techniques. Shakespeare's lines were cut for public
consumption, but there was so much to see - who would notice. In
Depression era America the movie theater had taken the place of
Reinhardt's all encompassing theater as a haven - and that was
certainly fine with him. And here was a feast for starving souls.
Reinhardt's multi-faceted approach to theater shone in all its
entertaining best-through Warner stage design efficiency. There was the
realist extravagance in forested backdrops, but the wonderful ballet of
the coming of night with dancer Nini Theilade was distilled expressionism.
Other ballet sequences featuring the fairies-children and adults - were
choreographed by 'Bronislava Nijinska' (the great Nijinsky's sister).
Reinhardt conjured all his and the camera's magic to create the
summation of a lifetime of stagecraft. His imaginative wizardry with
lighting put the remarkable glow on the faces of Cagney and his motley
peasant comrades as they rehearsed - on the dancing faeries in their
sequins - on the enchanted sparkle of shimmering (painted and tensiled)
woods and veiled atmosphere that awaited the gaiety of Titania and the
black looks of King Oberon. Everything of British and German folklore
was thrown in for good measure - from gossamer English faeries and
magic animals to rather frightening, rubber-masked dwarfs dressed as
Teutonic gnomes and goblins. Reinhardt fuzzed and gauzed the camera
lens and even put scintillating borders and covers of various sorts on
the camera cowling to frame some faerie scenes as if from a Victorian
painting by English artists Richard Dadd and Joseph Noel Paton-obvious
influences. The movie was not a box office success, but it was
Hollywood history-salute to Shakespeare? - certainly - but more so, a
great event of melting pot talent and modern film making that was
Hollywood coupled with profound European stage traditions that began
with Max Reinhardt. He - by the way - did no more films, perhaps
deciding that the real challenge was still the stage. But this one
record on sound film measures the genius of the man of theater and
gives today a glimpse of his creative powers and something of what his
stage productions were like. He was more interested in continuing
working on-stage as a director and producer, but he did not forsake
Hollywood. With his second wife actress 'Helene Thimig', from a famous Viennese
acting family, he split his time between the coasts. He found a
Hollywood-based theater workshop and an acting school in New York. All
of Reinhardt's productions were tallied - just from 1905 to 1930 - and
found to total 23,374 performances of 452 plays - and still a little
short. His wide-eyed exuberance for spreading out a great show was
indicative of the child in Max Reinhardt. He betrayed that very
comparison unashamedly: "Theater is the happiest haven for those who
have secretly put their childhood in their pockets, so that they can
continue to play to the end of their days."
changed from the family name Goldmann to Reinhardt in 1904), and even
as a boy, after his family moved to Vienna, he haunted the "Hofburg
Theater" and tried to see every play. In 1890 he studied at the
Sulkowsky Theater in Matzleinsdorf and started acting in Vienna and
later at the "Stadtheater" in Salzburg with duties as an assistant
director. But by 1894 he was invited to Berlin by Otto Brahm, director,
critic, and theater manager. And that was an important juncture. Brahm
had founded the "Free Stage" (1890), a theater company crusading for
realism in German theater by providing a forum for so-called banned
plays - the iconoclastic works, such as, those of Henrik Ibsen and Leo
Tolstoy. The result was the opening of German state theater to the
corpus of the modern stage by 1894. Brahm became director of the
Deutsches Theater in Berlin, and there Reinhardt cut his teeth on the
full theater experience, not simply acting alone, although he was much
applauded for his convincing specialty of playing old men.
In 1901 Reinhardt co-founded his own - sort of avant garde - cabaret
"Schall und Rauch" (Sound and Smoke) for experimental theater. It was
renamed "Kleines Theater" (Small Theater) in 1902, a place for
contemporary plays accented with the sort of spirit confined to cabaret
entertainment. He then opened and managed his own theater "Neues
Theater", now called the "Berliner Ensemble", from 1902 to 1905. These
were all a part of his evolving philosophy of the harmony of stage
design, costumes, language, music, and choreography as a whole unified
artwork, Gesamtkunstwerk. He was influenced by several figures, August
Strindberg for one, but most significantly by Richard Wagner and his
operatic ideal that the director must pull together all aspects of art
in his production. Reinhardt's infusion gave new dimensions to German
theater. After producing more than fifty plays at Neues Theater,
wherein he always found somebody to donate the money for productions,
he was asked to take the helm of Deutsches Theater in Berlin for Brahm
in 1905. At Deutsches Theater he embarked on big theater, employing the
whole physical theater space for productions and often even spreading
scenes into the audience as a means of fusing actors and audience in a
total theater experience. Here was something different - making theater
a democratic institution - after all the audience was the means of
generating the money to do more. And Reinhardt was never avant garde
enough to disdain making profit when it finally came knocking. He
staged truly gargantuan productions of epic pageantry and lighting with
stark colors for various dramatic effects. He staged one of his most
famous early productions, his first rendition of Shakespeare's "A
Midsummer Night's Dream" with a wooded forest revolving stage - turning
to reveal progressive new scenes. He became famous for realistic
direction of huge crowd and mob scenes.
He built the smaller Kammerspiele, a theater near Deutsches Theater in
1906. At this latter theater Reinhardt developed "Kammerspiel" theater,
chamber dramas in a minimalist and naturalistic style. This followed
from his expressionist influences which defied the realist dictum
(though he would look to realism as well in the mix to appropriately
stage some of his most ambitious efforts) and sought out more personal,
expressive, and emphatic ways of coaxing the elements of theater from
the conventional objective into palpable subjectivity. This all opened
Reinhardt to even more experimental ideas in staging with sometimes
nightmarish and vivid lighting techniques. He began introducing the
expressionist plays to the German-speaking public. And he also opened a
famous acting school which would function for decades turning out many
of Germany's great actors and actresses. In addition there was a acting
troupe that played in neutral areas of Europe during World War I. On
the bill was always a cycle of Shakespeare plays. Reinhardt did
everything in a big way and to accommodate a growing enthusiastic
theater-going public he had expanded with a chain of theaters
throughout Germany. He would manage thirty theaters and acting
companies in all.
Reihardt fulfilled another of his ideals, and that was of finding the
'perfect playhouse' as a means of complementing the content and
experience of a play. In 1919 he opened an enormous arena theater, the
"Grosses Schauspielhaus", (Great Playhouse), but known as the "Theatre
of the Five Thousand", which included a large revolving stage. Many of
his biggest productions were done here, including Shakespeare and Greek
plays. In the 1920s he built the two Boulevard Theaters on the
Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. And yet, the privations of post-war Germany
and the perennial anti-Semitic undercurrent caused a gradual loss of
his big audiences. In 1920 Reinhardt went back to Salzburg and
established the Salzburg Festival with composer Richard Strauss and
playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Annually he enjoyed staging the most
apropos of morality plays, the medieval "Everyman", with the biggest
set he could muster as a backdrop-the Austrian Alps in the open air
before the Salzburg Cathedral. From 1924 he became director of the
Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna and renewed his Berlin popularity
with a new theater called "Komoedie". His output was no less than
astounding. Whereas a theater director today would not commit himself
beyond two or three productions in a year, Reinhardt averaged twenty in
his first twelve years. Between 1916 and 1917 he produced 48 - his
highest output. Although he did few films, he was very interested in
the potential of the medium. He directed four silent movies starting in
1910. One of these was the filming of one his favorite pantomime plays
"The Miracle".
Reinhardt was a titan of influence and inspiration on a whole
generation of theater and film directors in Germany-many who spread the
word to the rest of the world. His disciples included: F.W. Murnau,
Paul Leni, Ernst Lubitsch, William Dieterle , and Otto Preminger. His staging of crowds and use
of lighting were frequently appropriated by the great silent filmmakers
of the Weimar Republic, including 'Fritz Lang' and Murnau. And he profoundly
influenced the expressionist movement in German film. He also
influenced many actors with his techniques of developing expressive
characterizations and movement-many would eventually come to New York
and Hollywood. But by 1933 Hitler had come to power, and Reinhardt
found himself falling victim to the same methods of attrition as other
German Jews. So-called assimilative families of ethnic mixtures,
whether high or low, were increasing placed in the same category as
ethnic Jews. His theaters were `appropriated' one-by-one by the
government and later his considerable properties confiscated. Later in
1933 he moved back to Austria to the "Theater in der Josefstadt" in
Vienna (where Preminger had quickly become a director), hoping his
native land could resist the Nazi machine. But the same pressures
enveloped him there. He left for a last theater tour of Europe and
arrived in America in 1934. "Midsummer" had a special significance for
Reinhardt. The play was his continued inspiration of a world without
ideologies - a utopia - as the theater itself was a haven from the
harsh realities of the world and of the individual. The audience
learned something, but they also could steep themselves without taxing
imagination in the illusion of theater. "Midsummer" was always a
work-in-progress for him - he had staged it twelve times up to 1934,
and in fact had already brought it to Broadway in late 1927. And that
was not his first trip to the US, having started presenting plays as
producer, director, or writer since early 1912 there (he did ten
productions in all to 1943).
He came to Hollywood in 1934 with his fame preceding him. His last tour
through Europe had included lavish productions in Florence (1933) and
a"Midsummer" at Oxford (1934). He offered to do the same in Hollywood
at an ideal outdoor stage-the Hollywood Bowl. But the bowl had to go -
it was removed to provide a view of a "forest" up the hillside - a
"forest" that required tons of dirt hauled in especially for its
planting, Reinhardt and his design staff erected a 250-foot wide,
100-foot deep stage. Also included was a pond and a suspension bridge
or trestle constructed from the hills in back to the stage to be lined
with torchbearers - with real flaming torches - for the wedding
procession inserted between Acts IV and V. This lavish production
included a ballet corps, children playing faeries, and hundreds of
extras. The 18-year-old Olivia de Havilland was at Mills College in Oakland,
participating in a school "Midsummer" production where in attendance
was none other than Max Reinhardt himself. He was so impressed with her
that he picked her for his extravaganza. Along with other Hollywood
actors, was 14 year old veteran of the cinema 'Mickey Rooney', added to the
cast as Puck. Another new arrival from Austria was classical opera
composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, musical collaborator of Reinhardt's from Vienna.
Reinhardt cabled his friend to come over and help him by doing the
orchestrations of Felix Mendelssohn's famous 1843 music for the
Hollywood Bowl production. It was a night to remember - even for
Jack L. Warner - who was not always sure of what he was seeing. But it was
enough to sign Reinhardt to direct a filmed version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) which
began shooting in December of 1934. De Havilland was back to start her
film career-Rooney for another memorable part. Otherwise, it was new
cast headed by Hollywood stars 'Dick Powell' and James Cagney and boasting the
best actors from Warner's impressive stock company of players. Since
Reinhardt did not know Hollywood filmmaking, Warner assigned a
co-director, William Dieterle, Reinhardt's acting then directing
protege, from the Deutsches Theater days in Berlin. Dieterle, the
disciple, had directed in Germany since 1923 and then came to Hollywood
to become one of the studio's most reliable new directors. It was the
beginning of Korngold's screen career as a film composer when he was
hired to do the film score, an arrangement based on Mendelssohn's music
used at the Bowl. But he actually mixed in much more of a variety of
the composer's music to fit the play. Warner's laid down 1.5 million
dollars and had its top technical staff step up to the challenge. But
all-most of all, Reinhardt - was on a bit of a learning curve.
Reinhardt was allowed the liberty of long play-like rehearsals instead
of rehearsing scene by scene. Reinhardt's early over-emphasized stage
acting directions were recalled by Cagney, who noted the actors often
stood around on the sidelines whispering to one another, "Somebody
ought to tell him." It was the politic Dieterle who did - setting his
old master straight as to the subtle wonders of the microphone and
sound film techniques. Shakespeare's lines were cut for public
consumption, but there was so much to see - who would notice. In
Depression era America the movie theater had taken the place of
Reinhardt's all encompassing theater as a haven - and that was
certainly fine with him. And here was a feast for starving souls.
Reinhardt's multi-faceted approach to theater shone in all its
entertaining best-through Warner stage design efficiency. There was the
realist extravagance in forested backdrops, but the wonderful ballet of
the coming of night with dancer Nini Theilade was distilled expressionism.
Other ballet sequences featuring the fairies-children and adults - were
choreographed by 'Bronislava Nijinska' (the great Nijinsky's sister).
Reinhardt conjured all his and the camera's magic to create the
summation of a lifetime of stagecraft. His imaginative wizardry with
lighting put the remarkable glow on the faces of Cagney and his motley
peasant comrades as they rehearsed - on the dancing faeries in their
sequins - on the enchanted sparkle of shimmering (painted and tensiled)
woods and veiled atmosphere that awaited the gaiety of Titania and the
black looks of King Oberon. Everything of British and German folklore
was thrown in for good measure - from gossamer English faeries and
magic animals to rather frightening, rubber-masked dwarfs dressed as
Teutonic gnomes and goblins. Reinhardt fuzzed and gauzed the camera
lens and even put scintillating borders and covers of various sorts on
the camera cowling to frame some faerie scenes as if from a Victorian
painting by English artists Richard Dadd and Joseph Noel Paton-obvious
influences. The movie was not a box office success, but it was
Hollywood history-salute to Shakespeare? - certainly - but more so, a
great event of melting pot talent and modern film making that was
Hollywood coupled with profound European stage traditions that began
with Max Reinhardt. He - by the way - did no more films, perhaps
deciding that the real challenge was still the stage. But this one
record on sound film measures the genius of the man of theater and
gives today a glimpse of his creative powers and something of what his
stage productions were like. He was more interested in continuing
working on-stage as a director and producer, but he did not forsake
Hollywood. With his second wife actress 'Helene Thimig', from a famous Viennese
acting family, he split his time between the coasts. He found a
Hollywood-based theater workshop and an acting school in New York. All
of Reinhardt's productions were tallied - just from 1905 to 1930 - and
found to total 23,374 performances of 452 plays - and still a little
short. His wide-eyed exuberance for spreading out a great show was
indicative of the child in Max Reinhardt. He betrayed that very
comparison unashamedly: "Theater is the happiest haven for those who
have secretly put their childhood in their pockets, so that they can
continue to play to the end of their days."