MAX REINHARDT.

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 1, 2 January 1936, Page 14

MAX REINHARDT.

The news that Leslie Howard is conferring with Max . Reinhardt at Salzburg on the subject of a film production of "Hamlet" stimulates -speculation, says a Melbourne critic. Both Reinhardt and Howard -were recently in America, and both are strong critics of Hollywood. "Hamlet," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Macbeth," "Julius Caesar," and "The Comedy of Errors" have comprised the Austrian director's Shakespearian stage productions. , Reinhardt is a brilliant impressionist, though sensation, since his London productions of "The Miracle" in 1911 and 1932, has seemed 'to mean more to him than anything else. , The * idiosyncrasies of the • stage ,- director have been given much publicity, and it was inevitable he should sooner or later be.drawrf to Hollywood. • He, who represented: the advent of the stage specialist in the theatre, considers that the theatre suffers from a lack of great plays and a great public; neither Shaw nor Pirandello has been essentially a man of the theatre, as were Shakespeare, Moliere, and Ibsen. -To this divorce that has occurred between the playwright and the actor is due, according to Reinhardt, the prominence of the producer in the modern theatre. Dr. Artur Kutscher said of Reinhardt recently: "By means of inventive direction, splendid casts, lavish settings and costumes, he has managed to make bad or exceedingly weak plays not merely effective, but great and lasting successes." Stylist or "fantasist," Reinhardt has no determined system. He wants always lo be free to adventure in any direction. In 1934 he went to Paris to produce "Chauve-Soiiris." Interviewed, he said he was producing Viennese operetta "because •'■ it represents to me the ideal marriage between the flower of the French mind—of Meilhac —and the pollen of Austrian music." At that time Reinhardt declared that, _,; with the exception of Charlie Chaplin, \f;. the motion picture left no mark upon ■•; him. "The real theatre," he added, * "should always enrich us, deepen our natures, and give us one more reason lor life or happiness."