The Tales of Hoffmann (1951)

Dolled Up

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy The Tales of Hoffmann on DVD

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's beautiful, colorful opera film is a nice companion piece to their ballet film, The Red Shoes, although this one is more "pure," containing no spoken dialogue. (It's from a 1880 Offenbach opera.) Based around the life and doomed loves of the poet Hoffmann (Robert Rounseville), it tells three stories of fantasy (plus a prologue and epilogue): in the first, Moira Shearer plays a dancer who is actually a mechanical doll. In the second, Hoffman's soul is trapped in a mirror. In the third, Hoffman falls for a dying singer living on a remote Greek island. As with The Red Shoes, the Archers achieve a truly amazing fantasy world, almost like a cartoon in which anything is possible. The restored, 128-minute version has its dry patches, but it's like nothing else you'll see. Long ago, two youngsters named Martin Scorsese and George A. Romero apparently took turns renting a 16mm print, neither knowing who the other one was. Scorsese now provides a commentary track on the Criterion DVD.

With: Moira Shearer, Ludmilla Tchérina, Anne Ayars, Pamela Brown, Léonide Massine, Robert Helpmann, Frederick Ashton, Mogens Wieth, Robert Rounseville, Lionel Harris, Philip Leaver, Meinhart Maur, Edmond Audran
Written by: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Directed by: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 128 minutes
Date: June 9, 2009