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

53/100

Desperately hoped that I could kick this off by quoting Lisa Cohen: "Okay, I guess I'm wrong. I guess I do like opera singing. I just didn't realize it." (Hoffmann's even the correct opera! Well, not the one Lisa's mom is inviting her to in that scene, but the one they sob through together at the end.) Alas, I did not experience her emotional epiphany, and my scandalously low rating almost entirely reflects an aversion to the form itself—opera just ain't for me, I'm afraid. Embarrassing to admit, makes me feel like a philistine, but them's the facts. Neither am I very keen on ballet, for that matter (love The Red Shoes, but that's about ballet, not a feature-length embodiment of same; see also Altman's The Company), and just to seal this poor movie's doom, I am, as I've noted many times, severely colorblind. Fortunately, I can still appreciate at least some of Technicolor's majesty even with my one defective cone, and was particularly blown away, chromatically speaking, by the tale of Olympia, which features some of the most striking yellows (a color I have no trouble with; blue is another, and there's plenty of that as well) in cinema history. Also made a note about the splendid initial introduction of Lindorf as a silent-era villain, his expression an exaggerated rictus, his cloak winding malevolently around columns and snaking through doorways. And that reminded me that I do very much dig Maddin's Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary, which is wall-to-wall ballet, even though, again, ballet is generally not my thing. There, though, the dancing's almost incidental, overwhelmed by mock-silent technique; Maddin clearly didn't give a shit about it except insofar as pure movement complemented his grand design (which is why balletomanes reportedly hate that movie). Here, even as they expertly employ the tools of cinema, Powell and Pressburger make an effort to honor the original medium, give viewers an opportunity to experience Hoffmann as it was conceived, to some degree. Which is entirely admirable, and it's very much my own problem that I wanted everyone to stop with the vibrato and the trilling so that I could better concentrate on the eye-popping production design.

(Also, this is an English translation, which probably only made things worse from my perspective. I know a little French, but not enough that I can understand it when opera-sung; it'd probably be better if I gave up on the story entirely and perceived the libretto strictly as another instrument. Interestingly, it made zero difference in "Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour"—the most famous piece, performed at the end of Margaret— which sounds identical in any language, apparently.)