Tales of Hoffman (1951)
A film review by Race Mathews
Copyright 1996 Race Mathews
The action of the Voyager Company in making available the neglected Powell and Pressburger masterpiece "the Tales of Hoffman" has been insufficiently acknowledged and applauded. "Hoffman" was released in 1951, at a time when the gritty realist school of cinema was dominant. The critics of the day were uncomprehending of the deliberate artifice of what Powell called his "totally composed" film. The sheer beauty of the production, the brilliance of the cast and the glories of Offenbach's music as conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham largely went over their heads. A similar obtuseness has been expressed more recently by Powell's fellow British director, Ken Russell. It remained for the young Martin Scorsese to grasp Powell's intention, from a black and white screening on television. That the film could have so great an impact, even in the absence of the lush and carefully planned colour for which Powell and Pressburger were renowned, speaks volumes for what the critics overlooked.
"Hoffman" was a follow-up by Powell and Pressburger to their earlier stunning box office success with "The Red Shoes". The theme of the film is Hoffman's disappointed love affairs with the Parisian mechanical doll Olympia (Moira Shearer), the Venetian courtesan, Giulietta (Ludmilla Tcherina), and the Greek singer, Antonia (Ann Ayars). The action occurs in the context of a fourth affair, with the actress Stella (Shearer again), whom Hoffman (Robert Rounseville) also loses. The separate tales are tied together by Hoffman, his muse, Nicklaus (Pamela Brown), and his nemesis, Lindorf (Robert Helpmann), who appears successively in the guises of the spectacle-maker, Coppelius, the magician, Dapertutto, and the doctor, Dr Miracle. Two ballets - the entrancingly beautiful Dragonfly Ballet and the Ballad of Kleinzach - were created for the film by the leading British choreographer of the day, Frederich Ashton, who also danced their male roles. Sets by the great stage and screen designer, Hein Heckroth, were never better than in "Hoffman". Sequences such as when Guilietta and Dapertutto move towards Hoffman in their gondola to the music of the Barcarolle or when Lindorf strips off a series of masks to expose his various roles in Hoffman's undoing are literally unforgettable.
Unhappily, Criterion's version omits a brief passage from the "Kleinzach" sequence, and a snippet from the "Antonia" tale is likewise seems to be missing. Powell also allowed Pressburger to talk him into dropping from the finale a sequence where Pamela Brown - surely one of the most screen's most bewitching presences - makes her last appearance as Nicklaus. Powell recalls in the second volume of his memoirs - Million Dollar Movie - Heckroth "painting her with gold leaf as the Muse of Hoffman. He had crowned her with golden laurels and swathed her in the lightest of golden drapes". It is to be hoped that someday some brave restorer will salvage these missing fragments from wherever they are currently gathering dust, and enable "Hoffman" to be seen precisely as Powell intended.
Like Scorsese, I was entranced by my first exposure to "Hoffman", and saw it seven more times before its season in Melbourne in 1952 ended. It was a great grief to me that it was never revived in Australia, and I now count having come across the Criterion discs a few days after their release, in the course of a short visit to New York, as one of my luckier experiences. If there had never been a Criterion "Lawrence", "Spartacus", "Kane" or now "Brazil" - if the Voyager Company had never produced anything but "Hoffman" - movie lovers would have ample reason to be grateful. A classic movie collection without "Hoffman" cannot be other than incomplete.
Email address: race@netspace.net.au
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