Memorable, crazy movie

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A lot of fun.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger filmed the opera "Tales of Hoffmann" in 1951, to stunning effect. Offenbach's opera is the story of three loves of the poet Hoffmann (Robert Rounsville) and epitomizes the struggle between art and love, as he is transformed as a poet by each failed romance.The story begins in Nuremberg as Hoffmann watches the object of his affections, Stella (Moira Shearer) dance a ballet. During the intermission, he goes into a tavern and tells the customers about his three major affairs.Opera singers, with two exceptions, dub the stars, who are mostly from the ballet world; several will be familiar from The Red Shoes: Moira Shearer, Ludmilla Tcherina, Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine, and Frederick Ashton. Only Hoffmann, Robert Rounsville, and Antonia, Anne Ayars, do their own singing. The rest of the vocals are provided by Dorothy Bond, Margherita Grandi, Monica Sinclair, Joan Alexander, Grahame Clifford, Bruce Dargavel, Murray Dickie, Owen Brannigan, Fisher Morgan, and Rene Soames.Both the singing and dancing are absolutely magnificent, the beautiful Shearer dancing much better than she did in The Red Shoes several years earlier, and Powell and Pressburger fill the opera with fantastic effects and colors. My favorite is Shearer's doll ballet sequence, with the glorious coloratura singing of the Doll Aria by Dorothy Bond, a discovery of Sir Thomas Beecham, who conducts the orchestra. Tragically she was killed in a car accident the next year; she deserved to be one of the most famous sopranos who ever lived.There are a couple of problems with this incredible piece. It's done in English, which due to the tamber of the high soprano voice, can make it difficult to understand. So people who know the opera would probably enjoy it the most. Secondly, it's not paced very well - there are some very draggy sections; some of the chorus work could have been cut.The overall effect for the eyes and ears is fabulous, but "The Tales of Hoffmann" leaves one depressed for how far we've fallen culturally in this world. Imagine mounting this film today. How many people would attend? Five?

Commendable for its avant garde techniques, this film was no doubt appreciated by Kenneth Anger, Fellini and Mario Bava. The first two acts are pretty solid - Olympia is whimsical surrealism and Giulietta is sensual surrealism. The Antonia segment torpedoes the entire project and I strongly suggest viewers quit at the end of act two, while they're ahead. Powell either ran out of money, ran out of inspiration, or both. Hoffmann's character is essentially written out of the third act and Powell focuses at length on Anne Ayars - a dumpy old thing with no screen presence. For a director who always discovered great looking talent, from Deborah Kerr to Helen Mirren, it seems suspicious that he would want Ayars in one of his most colorful films. One can pretty accurately surmise that she was sleeping with one of the money bags involved in the production. It makes for pretty miserable finale.For Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang fans, this film contains a big animated role for Robert Helpmann who played the Child Catcher.

This is quite flat. It's a filmed stage-opera without a prayer of captivating a non-opera-fans attention, and so it trowls on the artifice. I never see what these film-makers imagine they're offering when I see these artificial stage-set worlds, which seems to appear once every ten years (Bergman's Magic Flute, Sendak's Nutcracker, Papp's Pirates of Penzance, Zeffrelli's La Traviata, Fassbinder's Querelle) except perhaps the revenge of theater-lovers on film-goers. A film-maker not hamstrung by a libretto can assemble and build moments & pacing, freely, naturally. But a director an't do anything with pacing when hampered by an already structured libretto. ...which is why there has never been a great filmed opera. They never make the jump to film. You never see the hand of a strong director behind a film-opera.Coming from Powell and Pressburger, two men who knew what the hell they were doing with the film medium, the gap between expectation and film-flailing is even more shocking. The two wizards are yoked with the dull task of providing visuals for a bunch of lyrics that move at a snail's pace. So here comes another posturing tableaux that belies complexity or thought. Whatever is happening visually or in viewers minds is over quickly, so we wait around starved for content, while various singers make silly stage-faces, and squeeze in every note of another narratively facile/tiresome aria ...and we endure crowds unwilling to move on until they rhyme and shout another chorus of no consequence to the plot. Thought and action come to a complete standstill. And we get visuals like cake-decorating.If you go in with an open mind, 20 minutes in (as with 'The Red Shoes') it's clear there's not a chance this material is going to produce a film as deep, stimulating or engaging as Black Narcissus. 40 minutes into the pointless story of the automated Olympia I was already dreading the other two pieces in this three-act-er, and whatever linking material I'd have to endure.

I have a lot of admiration for Michael Powell and being a conductor, I wanted very much to see his Tales of Hoffmann. I've rarely been so disappointed! -If you are a film director student or a fan of old movies, I highly recommend you to watch his other movies such as "a Matter of Life and Death"/"Stairway to Heaven", "A Canterbury Tale", "Black Narcissus" or "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp". This one would only disappoint your sophisticated taste because it is utterly out of fashion and not even revolutionary for its time.-If you are an opera buff like me, you'll hate it for several reasons: Offenbach's score has always been a problem in terms of musical accuracy and legitimacy. Some conductors have edited the manuscript (fully discovered only recently after decades of persevering research from many musicologists), some have added material composed by themselves or by others. This version is just ludicrous, it is completely manipulated and arranged for a cinema version. BUT that is not the worst: Sir Thomas Beecham's conducting is a heavy bore in many parts (dreadful overture for example). The singing is in English and not in french! Although, it was the fashion in those times to sing operas in the language of the country where it was performed and not in the original language: total heresy! At last, the voices are terrible: the tenor is way too light for Hoffmann and could never sing such a demanding role on stage, Giulietta is often flat, Antonia has the voice of a goat, and Olympia should rather sing the soundtrack of Snow White.-If you don't know opera and want to discover this beautiful work, please avoid this! It won't make you appreciate it, it doesn't even remotely give justice to Offenbach's masterpiece. I can't recommend any version in particular as there are never flawless (wait for mine:)but the Brian Large's with Domingo will be more likely to make you love the music.