Max Reinhardt (German: [maks ˈʁaɪnhaʁt] ⓘ; born Maximilian Goldmann; 9 September 1873 – 30 October 1943) was an Austrian-born theatre and film director, intendant, and theatrical producer.

In 1920, Reinhardt established the Salzburg Festival by directing an open air production of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's acclaimed adaptation of the Everyman Medieval mystery play in the square before the Cathedral with the Alps as a background.

Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy have dubbed Reinhardt, "one of the most picturesque actor-directors of modern times", and write that his eventual arrival in the United States as a refugee from the imminent Nazi takeover of Austria followed a long and distinguished career, "inspired by the example of social participation in the ancient Greek and Medieval theatres", of seeking, "to bridge the separation between actors and audiences".

[1] In 1935, Reinhardt directed his first and only motion picture in the United States through Warner Brothers, the Expressionist film adaptation of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, starring Mickey Rooney, Olivia De Havilland, and James Cagney.

This was due not only to Joseph Goebbels' belief that Expressionism was degenerate art, but even more so due to the Jewish ancestry of director Max Reinhardt, Classical music composer Felix Mendelssohn, and soundtrack arranger Erich Wolfgang Korngold; whose work was already banned by Goebbels as allegedly degenerate music.

Even though Reinhardt did not live long enough to witness the end of Nazism in 1945, his formerly expropriated estate at Schloss Leopoldskron near Salzburg was restored to his widow and his legacy continues to be celebrated and honoured in the modern Germanosphere for his many radically innovative contributions to the performing arts.

After the war, the castle was restored to Reinhardt's heirs, and subsequently the home and grounds became famous as the filming site for the early scenes of the Von Trapp family gardens in the movie The Sound of Music.

In 1901, Reinhardt together with Friedrich Kayßler and several other theatre colleagues founded the Schall und Rauch (Sound and Smoke) Kabarett stage in Berlin.

"[14] According to Michael Paterson, "The play opens with an ingenious inversion: the Poet and Friend converse in front of a closed curtain, behind which voices can be heard.

After the 1918 Armistice, newspapers in the German language in the United States also published articles highly praising Reinhardt's production of the play, which singlehandedly gave birth to Expressionism in the theatre.

[18] After the November Revolution of 1918, Reinhardt re-opened the Großes Schauspielhaus (after World War II renamed into Friedrichstadtpalast) in 1919, following its expressionist conversion by Hans Poelzig.

In 1920, Reinhardt established the Salzburg Festival with Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal,[10] always directing the annual production of Hoffmansthal's acclaimed adaptation of the Medieval Dutch morality play Everyman, in which the Christian God sends Death to summon an archetype of the Human Race to Judgment Day.

[citation needed] From the 1910s to the early 1930s, one of Reinhardt's most frequent collaborators was the Swedish-born American composer and conductor Einar Nilson [sv], whom he employed as the music department head of his theaters; during international trips, Nilson would also serve as an advance man for Reinhardt, traveling ahead to the next performance location to audition singers and actors.

[21] Reinhardt followed that success by directing a film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1935 using a mostly different cast, that included James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, Joe E. Brown and Olivia de Havilland, amongst others.

The author of the play, Reinhardt's friend and confidant Karl Gustav Vollmoeller, had French director Michel Carré finish the shooting.

Wilhelm Diegelmann and Willy Prager played the bourgeois fathers as well as the sea gods, Ernst Matray [de] a bachelor and a faun, Leopoldine Konstantin the Circe.

In 1938, Walden Philip Boyle, later, a founding faculty of the Department of Theater Arts at UCLA, worked with the Max Reinhardt Theatre Academy in Hollywood.

[34] Students include Alan Ladd, Jack Carson, Robert Ryan, Gower Champion, Shirley Temple, Angie Dickinson, Frank Bonner, Anthony James, Greg Mullavey, Charlene Tilton, and Cliff Robertson In 1943, Reinhardt departed.

One of his grandsons (by adoption), Stephen Reinhardt, was a labor lawyer who served notably on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from his appointment by Jimmy Carter in 1980 until his death in 2018.

On 18 November 2015, the Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin inaugurated a memorial at Friedrichstraße 107 dedicated to the theatre's founders, Max Reinhardt, Hans Poelzig and Erik Charell.