Now what words to paint those features past comparing?In the midst of the austere and repressive cinematic milieu of 1951, The Tales of Hoffmann provides a much welcomed burst of color, music and thoroughly audacious stagecraft. I was definitely in the mood for some kind of audio-visual pick-me-up after spending the past few weeks contemplating the plain and somber atmospheres evoked by The Flowers of St. Francis, Diary of a Country Priest and The Browning Version - not that those films lack their own moments of charm and quiet amusement, but let's face it, they don't exactly dazzle their audience with the kind of wide-open spectacle that cinema can provide. This final (for now, anyway) Criterion offering from the Archers makes for a fitting send-off to the dynamic and creative team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who reeled off a string of bona fide classics throughout the preceding decade. Even though the Archers went on to make a few more pictures over the next several years, The Tales of Hoffmann is noted in its commentary track as their last great film. It marks a culmination of their efforts as they continued to press their art in new directions, building on ideas and successes from earlier films, though it clearly has strong competition from many of those films as to which ought to be regarded as their best. It may not even be much to the liking of some of their admirers. I'll go on record here as respecting their willingness to take risks and create something rather unique among all the films I've ever seen, and provocatively bold for its time. Even though it took me some work and diligently focused attention to find my way into at first.
My first stab at watching The Tales of Hoffmann took place several days ago at the end of a busy day full of distractions. Figuring that a brief dip into escapism would suit me just fine after all that had taken place, I popped in the DVD and quickly found myself bewildered by the sensory overload. An old fashioned, strange looking man grimaced and strode dramatically across the screen, leering with arched eyebrows at a skinny red-headed woman in flamboyant leotards twisting and twitching upon the stage. Suddenly a devilish looking insect-man leaps down upon her from on high and they commence to cavorting with a dazzling display of balletic maneuvers. Meanwhile, the creepy old guy doles out golden coins in exchange for a key wrapped in a hankie. Then the insect-man slips down through a hole in the stage, the woman gestures dramatically, we see him sliding head-first, upside down on the screen, she prances on her tippy-toes into a big bright sunset as the orchestra swells, and that's that. Though it reminded me a bit of Disney's Fantasia in the impressionistic way it melded music and image, my thoughts were best summed up in a phrase not so common back in 1951: "WTF?"
Here's what I'm talking about:
Before I had time to click the remote back to the beginning of the scene, dinner was served and we went on to do other things that night. The first thing I learned about this film though was that the Archers weren't interested in spoon-feeding their audience. Not that I hold against them in any way their lack of foresight regarding the media-saturated, ADD viewing habits of 21st century American suburbanites like myself. I resolved that the next time I sat down to watch this film, I'd give it careful attention and learn the basic storyline in advance, as is usually a good practice for the theatrical arts. This isn't a film where you have to worry about spoilers. The more you know about what's going to happen, the better prepared you are to enjoy it. Even Martin Scorcese says the same thing on his commentary track - usually one full viewing is necessary in order for fuller appreciation to set in.
So here's a quick outline for you to read through that I hope will ultimately enhance your viewing. I've also linked to some other good write-ups on the film if you want to explore other points of view. There's a lot of background out there about Jacques Offenbach, the opera's composer, and ETA Hoffmann, the German poet whose life these tales are loosely based upon. I have nothing to say about them, they're unfamiliar figures to me. The Archers made this film primarily as a way of following up the surprising success they enjoyed with The Red Shoes, particularly in the USA as its portrayal of ballet caught on strongly with a generation of moms and daughters as the first crop of Baby Boomers got old enough to start attending dance classes. Most of the leading dancers from that film were also featured in The Tales of Hoffmann, which presumably had a calming effect on the financial backers of this unorthodox production, and it was also helped along by the prestige lent to the project by Sir Thomas Beecham, prominent conductor and hereditary baronet at the time.
After the prologue (sampled above, and an addition to the original opera in order to provide Moira Shearer an opening showcase dance) we meet Hoffmann himself as he regales a saloon full of men stories of his personal romantic disappointments as he waits for his latest flame, Stella (the dragonfly ballerina) to finish her performance and meet him after the show. Hoffmann is a famous and respected poet, not to mention a known carouser, so he has no trouble attracting a captive audience. He tells three tales that in my view correspond to successive stages of erotic development that a man goes through over the course of his lifetime. The first, represented in the Tale of Olympia, involves a mechanical doll, created and controlled by a demented craftsman who conspires with an ally to trick Hoffmann into believing she is real, all for the purpose of swindling him out of his money and, coincidentally, breaking his heart. He's fooled by the use of magic spectacles that give the illusion of life to that which is artificial and manufactured. The correspondence here is in how young men tend to idealize, objectify and stand in dumb-struck awe of women they find attractive. When his magic spectacles (and thus the spell he's under) are broken, he suffers the dual shocks of mockery from the crowd and the discovery he'd fallen in love with an automaton.
The Tale of Giulietta follows, the story of Hoffmann's encounter with a Venetian courtesan (more directly, prostitute) which I found to be the most interesting and powerful section of the film. (Please note, this constitutes no admission whatsoever on my part that I have a "thing" for prostitutes. I just admire Ludmilla Tcherina's performance and the red-green color scheme, that's all.) Hoffmann is by now a bit more mature, described as "a man of the world" going about his travels and probably feeling a bit flush and full of himself along the way. You can see hints of the swollen ego that makes him such an easy target of seduction as he stands on the bridge, taking in Giulietta's admiring glance as she sizes him up from the comforts of her sensuously drifting gondola. This clip will jump over the central section of the tale, where you'd see the lovely Ludmilla at the peak of her sultry powers, luring Hoffmann into her clutches not based on any genuine attraction for the man but in order to win the baubles promised her by her sinister consort (more directly, pimp) Dappertutto. His interest is to capture mens' souls, and Giulietta is simply the bait he uses to take them captive. You see Hoffmann's fall and (just in the nick of time) redemption as his faithful sidekick Nicklaus shows up to instill a little wisdom and the key that once again breaks Hoffmann out of the spell he'd fallen under. (Yes, Nicklaus is performed by a woman, Pamela Brown, whose enigmatic presence lent a distinctive touch in a supporting role to I Know Where I'm Going!)
Setting aside the events and dramatic developments in that clip for a moment, you can also get a sense of director Michael Powell's roots in the latter days of cinema's silent era in his use of exaggerated expressions, variable filming speeds and frequent employment of a wide range of camera tricks to surprise and delight the audience. One of the most distinctive aspects of The Tales of Hoffmann was that its soundtrack was recorded first and all of the on-screen action was filmed and fitted to the music. This basically has the effect of making it a "live animated" feature, or in Powell's term, a "composed film" - pretty much the same thing that Walt Disney had been doing with hand-painted cells for the previous couple of decades. Obviously such an approach is necessary with cartoons, but it hadn't really happened like that before with human actors in the sound era, despite frequent use of lip-syncing in musicals before and after. Uber-fan George Romero (director of the original "Living Dead" series) calls The Tales of Hoffmann the first music video, and I don't know of anyone who would dispute him on that.
The challenge for today's viewers, of course, is that this music may come across as stodgy and inaccessible for some, downright unpleasant for others. That potential obstacle becomes the most obvious in the opera's final section, the Tale of Antonia. This segment's opening scene was edited down for the film's American distribution because it slowed the pace and took too long to develop. Though this DVD restores the missing footage, I can't exactly quibble with the decision to trim a few minutes from the run time. It involves a fully matured Hoffmann, now a celebrated poet and artist, arriving on a Greek island to woo and ultimately wed a young woman who's been forbidden by her conductor father to follow in her deceased mother's vocation as an operatic diva. The father's concern is based on a strange illness that through the exertions of singing could lead to her death. Even though Antonia possesses a beautiful voice and has long dreamed of receiving the ovations of enraptured audiences, she feels obliged to obey her father, content to settle for the life of domestic tranquility laid out for her. Upon learning of the risk to her health, Hoffmann becomes complicit in suppressing Antonia's artistic gift, capturing in my view the diminishing effect that patriarchal mores can have on the spirit of artistic expression and creativity. However, after her father is tricked by the insidious Doctor Miracle, the fiend conjures up an apparition of her dead mother who appeals to the daughter's vanity and desire for acclaim, thereby persuading her to sing herself to death. Hoffmann arrives just as Antonia hits her final triumphant note, before perishing in operatic ecstasy. Antonia ascends to the heavens, with Hoffmann once again left standing there, a bereft heart-broken schmuck, wearied but now wiser from the ordeal. The film concludes with Hoffmann's realization that women aren't to be trusted, his destiny is as a poet, not a househusband and that no better companionship is to be found than that offered by his ambiguously androgynous sidekick Nicklaus. He finally slumps over the table with the chorus "drinking is divine" ringing through the tavern, while Stella eyes him with dismay, led away in the arms of of Hoffmann's arch-enemy Lindorff (who's appeared in different disguises as the villain of each of the Tales.)
I've expended a fair amount of energy summing up a film that, as my daughter put it to me, probably wouldn't have drawn my interest if it weren't a Criterion release. That's a fair-enough charge, though I think my admiration for the Archers would have eventually led me here just to see what they accomplished in this gaudy, fascinating capstone to their career. I had a funny experience the other night when I took the disc to my workplace Wellness Center for a repeat viewing while I exercised. I put the film on the big screen TV and pumped up the audio a bit so I could hear the music clearly over the sound of the treadmill. I had the place to myself, as is often the case, but about half an hour into my routine, a young 20-something co-worker came in spend time on the bikes. It was a bit awkward having this guy walk in on during one of Antonia's most impassioned arias. Suffice it to say that I'm more than a bit curious as to what he'll tell his buddies he saw when he was at the gym that night!
This isn't the film I'd choose to introduce Powell and Pressburger to my friends, nor can I recommend it whole-heartedly across the board to anyone who reads this blog regularly. The clips I've embedded here hold a lot more power of persuasion, yea or nay, than any verdict I can deliver here in any case. I'll chalk this one up as a worthy contributor to my on-going cinematic education. Only time will tell how often I ever get the urge to pop it in the player simply for pure entertainment's sake.
Next: Miss Julie