Barnes & Noble

The British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger are responsible for some of the greatest movies ever to come from across the Atlantic, including A Matter of Life and Death (a.k.a. Stairway to Heaven, 1946), Black Narcissus (1947), and The Red Shoes (1948), to name a few. This luxurious adaptation of Jacques Offenbach’s famous opera is something of a Red Shoes follow-up; it, too, stars ravishing redhead Moira Shearer, whose beauty cinematographer Christopher Challis sublimely captures in Technicolor. Offenbach’s phantasmagorical piece is transferred to film with great imagination and taste, unusually inventive effects, and a lush, resplendent production that’s a joy to look at. A brilliant integration of narrative and dance, it presents three story lines, all of which spring from the imagination of Hoffman (Robert Rounseville), a student spurned by the prima ballerina (Shearer) whom he loves. In his dreams she represents lovers from his past lives -- a life-size doll (also Shearer) created by a magician, a beautiful and bewitching courtesan (Ludmilla Tcherina), and a famous conductor’s daughter (Ann Ayars). Powell forces his viewers to work a little: In true operatic fashion the dialogue is sung rather than spoken, and the individual stories may not be fully comprehensible without fairly close attention. But Tales abounds in cinematic virtuosity and ingenious stagecraft, and any viewer willing to immerse him- or herself in the fantasy world created by Powell and co-writer Pressburger will be amply rewarded for their attentiveness. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

Most baby-boomers are familiar with the Powell-Pressburger production of the Offenbach opera Tales of Hoffman only through the full-color stills from the film which were reproduced in the "Motion Picture" section of The World Book Encyclopedia. If this is your only memory of the film, we advise you to seek out a copy of this lengthy but visually enthralling picture as soon as possible. Metropolitan opera star Robert Rounseville plays Hoffman, a university student who is spectacularly unlucky in affairs of the heart. Each of his love affairs with Olympia (Moira Shearer), Giulietta (Ludmilla Tcherina) and Antonia (Ann Ayars) is doomed to failure due to circumstances far beyond our hero's control (Olympia, for example, turns out to be nothing more than a life-sized mechanical doll). As in the previous Powell-Pressburger collaboration The Red Shoes, the film's best moments are its ballet sequences, choreographed by Jane Ashton. Offenbach's score is given a splendid rendition by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of the legendary Sir Thomas Beecham. Most prints of Tales of Hoffman run 118 minutes, eliminating the closing "Tale of Antonia" sequence; the laserdisc version has been restored to 127 minutes, while the search goes on for the complete 138-minute negative. Hal Erickson

Product Details

• UPC: 037429126226
• Source: CRITERION
• Aspect Ratio: Pre-1954 Standard (1.33.1)
• Sound: Dolby Digital Mono
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English
• Time: 2:07:00
• Sales Rank: 888

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Essential Art House, Vol. 4

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