The Tales of Hoffmann - Criterion Collection | Moira Shearer, Ludmilla Tchérina

The Tales of Hoffmann - Criterion Collection | Moira Shearer, Ludmilla Tchérina | Brilliant hokum

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The Tales of Hoffm...

	The Tales of Hoffmann - Criterion Collection Moira Shearer, Ludmilla Tchérina Criterion Collection, 2005 average customer review:based on 39 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The last great Powell and Pressburger film, and it is extraordinary.

Poor Hoffmann. He is a poet who is famously unlucky in love. As a young student in Paris, he first fell in love with Olympia (Moira Shearer). She was a gorgeous creature with pale, silken skin, luminous eyes and red hair. Unfortunately, she was an automaton. Then, as a man of the world in Venice, he fell in love with Giulietta (Ludmilla Tcherina). She was seductive, with black eyes that held promises and with long, raven hair. Unfortunately, she stole men's reflections and then their souls. Next, as a famous poet visiting a beautiful isle, he fell in love with Antonia (Ann Ayers), a young, passionate opera singer. Unfortunately, she suffered from consumption. Throughout it all, he is accompanied by a young and skeptical friend, Nicklaus (Pamela Brown), and followed by the sinister Lindorf (Robert Helpmann), who seems determined to thwart Hoffmann. Now, he waits in a tavern for his new love, the ballet dancer Stella (Moira Shearer). And while he waits and drinks, everyone urges Hoffmann to tell them the tales of his loves. And in this opera by Jacques Offenbach, and in this marvelous movie by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, he does.

The Tales of Hoffmann is a linear descendant of Powell's and Pressburger's The Red Shoes. The same themes of art, love, life and choices are explored. Even some of the same artists are present: Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann, Leonide Massine and Ludmilla Tcherina. The Tales of Hoffmann, however, stakes out new ground. Powell and Pressburger have taken an opera and turned it into a fantasy of cinema unlike any opera ever staged, or any film ever made. It moves from light, amusing and eccentric to dark and sinister. An undercurrent of romanticism is present, but we end up with romantic pessimism. Hoffmann's three poetic loves all are unattainable, and the prime cause always are figures who resemble Lindorf. He fares no better with Stella.

The film may be an opera, but it seamlessly interweaves ballet and the camera itself. Things blend, disappear, shift and change, and all within one of the greatest production designs I've ever seen. Hein Heckwroth, who worked with Powell and Pressburger on some of their greatest films, such as Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death, created a visual world for the film which calls on expressionism, romanticism and surrealism, all in such a lush style as to be startling and hypnotizingly satisfying. The story of Olympia is accented with bright yellow; the story of Giulietta is a sensual red; the story of Antonia is a tragic blue. Powell works within all this with flourishes and images that are gripping: Puppets, gorgeous and grotesque, that come to life; Olympia flashing about en pointe, only pausing to be wound up again; Giulietta, in jeweled black tights with a green scarf around her head flowing back in the breeze, standing motionless in a gondola as it slowly moves across a lagoon; candle wax that turns to jewels and then turns again to wax; a carpet that becomes a flight of stairs that remains a carpet; dancing grotesques that step from beer mugs. We watch all this played out in color so intense and rich it's mesmerizing. In America, Vincent Minnelli has often been called one of the great production stylists in movies. In my view, his work on such films as Ziegfeld Follies, The Pirate or Yolanda and the Thief, with their billows of purple smoke and endless lengths of pastel gauze, can't hold a candle to Powell. Both can be lush, but while Powell comes up with intense images for inventive storytelling, Minnelli often seems just overwrought. The Tales of Hoffmann really is a masterpiece that combines art of many disciplines, including production design, into one extraordinary film about art.

And yet...the movie in my opinion is an acquired taste. While many people may like the idea of lavish Technicolor images, fewer will go for ballet, and even fewer for opera. The tension between art and love may be too ephemeral for many to pay attention to. And as amusing as many of Powell's flourishes are, you have to be alert to appreciate most of them. I'd urge you, if you liked The Red Shoes, to take a chance. Watch The Red Shoes again. Then read the program notes by Ian Christie before you put on The Tales of Hoffmann. Watch it when you have plenty of time. Don't feel you have to watch it without taking a break (a good time for one is between the stories of Olympia and Giulietta). If you're absolutely sure you don't like it, well, wait a few weeks and just watch again the tale of Olympia. You might surprise yourself. And for those who already like The Tales of Hoffmann, or may like it, welcome to the Powell and Pressburger fan club.

The Criterion film transfer is beautiful. In addition to the liner notes by Christie, there are several extras, including film commentaries by Martin Scorsese, Bruce Eder and George Romero.

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Brilliant hokum

As with "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes", this is mid 20th century British Romanticism (and a very British idea of exoticism) at its best. Today, let's be frank, the films are a bit hokey, if gloriously so (which is hust to say that they'll never be made this way again, which is something to celebrate).

Wondeful.

powell & pressburger channel offenbach & george romero

an amazing movie! to begin, my thanks to my friend bugsy for turning me on to this, which i probably would not have watched on my own. adapted from the offenbach opera, there are so many startling images i will only single out three: the coil springs popping out of olympias severed head and dissolving into the canal of venice; the barefooted giulietta descending the statued steps portrayed as the heads of her victims; the desperate antonia running thru door after door only to continue entering the same room. beautifully danced, beautifully sung, i watched this two times in a row (second time with martin scorseses terrific commentary) and i KNOW i could watch this many more times and STILL find something new. great work by director michael powell and scenarist emerich pressburger, this has gone on my list of the 100 best ever.

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After The Red Shoes

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) has long suffered by comparison with their lush, ostensibly realistic masterpiece, The Red Shoes (1948). The visual blandness and musical tedium of Hoffmann's final episode accounts for this, at least in part, as well as the libretto's relentlessly artificial variations on a premise that's all too precious. A word might also be said about the miscasting of Robert Rounseville as the eponymous hero-victim. All of this is more than offset, however, by brilliant dancing - Moira Shearer's, of course, but also Leonide Massine's, Robert Helpmann's, Ludmilla Tcherina's, and choreographer Frederick Ashton's - to say nothing of the ambitious and almost perfectly realized production values, including some ingenious special effects. Nor can the musical performance - by the Royal Philharmonic under Sir Thomas Beecham - be slighted. Some viewers of the original film and its VHS copy have complained of imperfect illumination and color clarity, both of which this ultra high-tech version has brilliantly remedied. This, then, is the best possible Powell-Pressburger Hoffmann. And, as in Criterion's version of The Red Shoes - a wealth of extra features provides otherwise unavailable insights into the auteurs' ingenious planning, production, and editing. Recommended.

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Offenbach's opera on the big screen

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

Tales of Hoffman directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is based on Jacques Offenbach's opera of the same name. It is about a poet who reminisces about three women who he was in love with.

The film is adapted from the opera very well and has some great scenes.

The Criterion DVD has some fine special features also.

There is audio commentary by Martin Scorsese and Bruce Eder, an interview with director George A. Romero who talks about how seeing this film with his grandparents as a child inspired him to make movies, a short film adaptation of The Sorcerer's Apprentice directed by Powell, a photo gallery of production designer, Hein Heckroth's drawings, a gallery of production and publicity photos, and a theatrical trailer.

This a great DVD edition and I recommend it.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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