The Tales of Hoffmann (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1951) (Patreon)

When watching The Red Shoes, I was quite taken with the Archers' bizarre, experimental approach to combining ballet and cinema, so much so that I wanted to see them fully commit to that method without relying on a wraparound story. This interest is what prompted me to watch The Tales of Hoffmann ahead of acknowledged classics like 49th Parallel or Colonel Blimp. In staging Offenbach's incomplete final opera, Powell and Pressburger do apply that same earlier method, but here they really double down on the unique potentials of art direction and editing. Even as someone who is not much of an Offenbach fan -- I find this opera rather musically undistinguished, but am open to argument -- I was mostly captivated by Hoffmann as a cinematic experience.

I say "mostly," because the opera's three acts (plus prologue) are not exactly created equal, and it's an unfortunate side effect of Offenbach's death that the third section, about the doomed soprano Antonia (acted and sung by Ann Ayars) is the least compelling part of the opera. In theory, the redundancy of E.T.A. Hoffmann's narrative concerns not only provides the opera with broader coherence, but also employs structural repetition as a bit of formalist gamesmanship. In actuality, the "Antonia" act feels like a mere retread of themes and gestures already better formulated elsewhere in the work. Still, Ayars is a powerhouse, one of only two performers who both act in the film and sing their designated parts. She sort of plays the role here that Moira Shearer did in The Red Shoes: the world-class artist who can also act for the camera.

It is difficult to describe Powell and Pressburger's style in both Hoffmann and The Red Shoes, but if I were forced to put it into language, I might call it "magical theatricality." Adopting the essential parameters of performance, the Archers enter the action with  the camera, breaking up the proscenium and using space as an expressive tool. That might be the bare minimum for an opera film, but that's not all they offer. With elaborate set constructions that transform or disappear in the blink of an eye, or the use of shifting color and tonal register to instantaneously alter the opera's mood, the Archers are asserting cinema's place within the vocabulary of the Gesamtkunstwerk. This film doesn't document. It molds.

Initially Hoffmann reminded me of the films of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, not only his elaborate adaptation of Parsifal but his own cine-opera of sorts, Hitler: A Film From Germany. It seems evident that Syberberg was influenced by the Archers and their open embrace of theatrical conventions: expressive makeup, distorted sets, brash costumes. But of course Syberberg's artistic temperament is 180 degrees from that of the Archers. Where Powell and Pressburger take a deeply serious operatic work and enliven it with grand Expressionism and sleight of hand, Syberberg's films use elements that would otherwise serve as Brechtian jokes (puppet shows, films-within-films, kitschy gewgaws) and weighs them down with leaden seriousness.

But the more I watched Hoffmann, the more I realized that its overall approach recalls one filmmaker above all others. This is exactly the sort of film Georges Méliès would have made, had he been born just a few decades later. The sets are not merely artificial; they combine whimsy and portent, displaying heavy black outlines and off-kilter centers of gravity, much like the theatrical flats seen in A Trip to the Moon and other Méliès masterworks. Editing is used to create impossible events within the context of the stage: point of view shifts, transfigurations, people vanishing into thin air. What a lighting designed would only be able to approximate -- such as the light-on-water highlights on the face of courtesan Giulietta (Ludmilla Tchérina, sung by Margherita Grande) -- is accomplished flawlessly through photographic superimposition.

Having said all this, The Tales of Hoffmann is what it is: a solid, second-tier staple of the repertoire. The idea of using an author as a main dramatic figure in an adaptation of his work is certainly nothing new, since an anthology work requires some sort of consistency of character. Hoffmann (acted and sung by Robert Rounseville) is basically a pretext, and having him as the focal point of both opera and film only clarifies the extent to which he's not a particularly rounded character. As per the prologue, he's a storyteller who (to his credit, I suppose) spins tales that are ultimately self-indicting. He's in love with the idea of love, it seems, besotted with three "women" (two women and one automaton) with little in common. As Hoffmann himself suggests, all three together might best serve as facets of a single inamorata.

The "Olympia" sequence is far and away the strongest, not only because it is perhaps Hoffmann's best-known work (thanks, Freud), but it lends itself to the most outré staging and performance. A needlessly layered plot suggests that Hoffmann is caught in the crossfire between rival techno-capitalists, and making the poor dupe fall for the robot is an afterthought, or a cruel joke. Powell and Pressburger employ their most elaborate visual ideas here, as Spalanzani (Léonide Massine, sung by Grahame Clifford) and his mechano-morph henchman Cochenille (Frederick Ashton, sung by Murray Dickie) ensnare Hoffmann in a devious pseudo-existence, with marionettes posing as live partygoers, all to generate an air of legitimacy for Olympia (Moira Shearer, sung by Dorothy Bond). This sequence features a two-tiered reality, small and large, as well as the "magic glasses" conceit that the Archers use as a metaphor for cinema more broadly.

The "Giulietta" sequence is not as inventive, but does make more comprehensive use of filmic materials, as Hoffmann is robbed of his mirror reflection, candle drippings morph into precious jewels and back again, and the grotesque makeup and costumes of Giulietta's coterie serve to make her all the more seductive. Hoffmann knows that a man of his stature cannot love a "fallen woman," but her hard Gothic edges are more tantalizing when surrounded by ghoulish human waxworks. 

And through each and every romantic misadventure, Hoffmann's young valet Nicklaus (Pamela Brown, sung by Monica Sinclair) is at his side. Over the years many commenters have noted the gay subtext in the Hoffmann / Nicklaus friendship. This girlish ephebe is clearly smitten with his master, and Brown's sly performance operates like a Greek chorus in footnote, her eyerolls and coy glances providing a camp element that the Archers clearly understand. And yet, Nicklaus's love and devotion reminds us of just what a tedious dullard Hoffmann really is. Kid, you can do better!