Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11319 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-08-19
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Dutch, French, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, German, Italian, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 84 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Woody Allen's 1982 homage to Bergman and Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is a delight from start to finish and must rate as one of his most joyous films. The period setting--Edwardian up state New York--gives the whole thing a misty, elegiac quality.

Part Midsummer Night's Dream (the magic supplied by visions through a spirit glass) and part Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman's source material provides the basic plot and ensuing couplings), it's a gentle satire on male sexuality and frustration. Allen handles the angst with the lightest of touches. He plays a Wall Street broker who spends his holidays inventing flying machines (they work, with telling consequences). He and his wife (Mary Steenburgen) are increasingly depressed by their ailing sex life. Cue the arrival of weekend guests: crusty academic (Jose Ferrer) and beautiful blue-stocking fiancée previously in love with Allen (Mia Farrow, of course); and insatiable doctor (Tony Roberts) with his latest squeeze, a nurse (the excellent Julie Hagerty). Eighty minutes of unravelling, discovery and renewal follow, accompanied by a Mendelssohn sound track. This is one of Allen's most treasurable pictures.

On the DVD: A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is presented in widescreen that recaptures the pleasure which greeted the setting of this most pastoral of Allen's films on its first release; it really does glow with summery light. The standard stereo soundtrack is perfectly acceptable. Extras include the original theatrical trailer and multiple language soundtracks.--Piers Ford

Special Features
1.85 Wide Screen
16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
DVD 5
French\German\Italian\Spanish
English\German
English
Region 2
Mono English French German Italian Spanish
Mono
Original Theatrical Trailer
Interactive Menu Screens
Chapter Selections
Dutch\French\Greek\Hungarian\Polish\Portuguese\Spanish

Synopsis
This wonderful, frothy treat from Woody Allen follows three couples frolicking in the countryside at the turn of the century. At a beautiful farmhouse in upstate New York, wealthy Andrew (Allen) passes his summer days tinkering as a hack inventor and attempting to make love with his frigid wife, Adrian (Mary Steenburgen). Then Leopold (Jose Ferrer), a self-possessed scholar, and his future wife, the highly sexed Ariel (Mia Farrow), come for a visit. The second couple added to the mix is Maxwell (Tony Roberts), a doctor, and his current girlfriend, Dulcy (Julie Hagerty), a nurse who advises Adrian on her sex life. It turns out that Andrew once had an innocent romance with Ariel, but he's one of the very few men she has met and not slept with. Now Andrew is very much interested in Ariel again--and she in him. And thus begins this whimsical farce of lust, love, and longing among friends.

Customer Reviews

' I did not create the cosmos, I merely explain it'
There is no other Woody Allen film quite like this one. Although the protagonists are the usual angst-ridden middle class New Yorkers, the setting is miles-and years- from modern Manhattan. A dilapidated housestead in a beautiful rural location at the beginning of the 20th. century is the base for a film exploring Allen's fascination with human relationships.

The basic story is simple. Leopold (Jose Ferrer-a wonderful performance), a pompous philosophy professor from middle Europe visits Andrew's (Allen) and his wife's house for the last day of his bacherlorhood with his attractive and very much younger wife-to-be Ariel (Mia Farrow). Andrew's friend, the lascivious doctor Maxwell (Tony Roberts) joins them with his latest aquisition Dulcy (Julie Hagerty). None of these relationships is working; there is a great deal of soul searching, arguing, seductions...the normal Allen fayre. At first this seems quite bizarre, as we are so used to seeing this played out against a New York background; it seems alien in this lush rural setting. Allen is, mysteriously, both a Wall Street banker and an eccentric inventor (somewhat like Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). His inventions include an early flying machine which plays its part in one attempted seduction. All this is enough to unsettle the viewer as you're not quite sure what genre this is-comedy, romance,fantasy, drama.

But if you stay with the film long enough, the mind spends less time juggling with the surface matter and starts to be seduced by the atmosphere. There is at the heart of this film the issue of life being what we make of it; the cold professor gradually realises that there may be more to life than what science alone can explain.
The countryside is beautifully shot by cinematographer Gordon Willis (responsible for Allen's Manhattan..) and the magical score using Mendelssohn's music adds to the enchanted feeling of this movie. The tale ends magically, and quite suddenly, and then you realise you want to see it again; not a masterpiece but an enjoyable little gem.

The transfer to DVD is fair-not as sharp as some, and my copy had some graininess to it. The sound is basic mono. (For goodness sake don't let the disc continue after the final credits as you will then be bombarded with the copyright warning in umpteen languages which you can't stop. Hit the stop button as soon as you see 'An Orion Pictures release').

For some of us this film has a special place in Allen's output, and is an essential purchase. But given the basic nature of the disc-there's just a trailer as an extra feature-this disc is overpriced. This film is twenty years old. MGM, put it out at under a tenner please.
But the film remains a little gem.

Love is in the Air
The most gentle of Allen‘s films, so gentle in fact that you feel betrayed by the 1 hour 24min duration, all over so quickly! And as clearly stated on the packet (Sorry couldn’t resist that) teeming with all the visual beauty of an impressionist painting!! a film that will happily withstand repeat viewings, unlike some of the later offerings.

Allen at his most endearingly relaxed and graceful.
Now that Woody Allen seems desperately in need of stricter quality control - maybe a new collaborator or some sort of sabbatical - it is refreshing to (re)visit this relaxed, charming and sunny little farce from the early eighties. A period setting in the American countryside, but it hardly registers as the film's fanciful romantic ambience envelopes the viewer so completely. Anyone who remembers Alan Alder's Four Seasons will enjoy this. Only the metamorphosis at the end struck me as out of sync with the comedy.

This ensemble movie is witty, engaging and perfectly paced; it complements Love & Death superbly and will be ideally suited to anyone normally wearied by Allen's New York neuroses. A perfect tonic.