Powell & Pressburger: The Tales of Hoffmann
January 15, 2025
Enchanted Evenings: The Boundless Cinema of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
This screening has been rescheduled for January 15, 2025 and will take place at SIFF Cinema Uptown. See siff.net/egyupdate for more information.
Set to Jacques Offenbach’s enchanting music, an archetypal Poet (Robert Rounseville) courts women, his muses (Moira Shearer, Ludmilla Tcherina), in various lands and times, ever pursued by his nemesis (Robert Helpmann). Delectably intoxicating.
Individual Tickets: Select showtime to purchase.
Passes: $125 | $85 SIFF Members - includes full series access
SIFF year-round passes and vouchers are not valid for this screening.
Tickets
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Wednesday, January 15, 2025
The Archers’ films always evoke a palpable spirit-sense of place, from sunny British country lanes to the rarified air of the high Himalayas, and here they conjure the shifting, intermingled realities of author E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822), who declared, “Before you are even aware of it, you will be in a strange magical realm where figures of fantasy step right into your own life.” Composer Jacques Offenbach adapted Hoffmann’s Gothic tales into an 1880 opera fantastique that inspired this film, which, as British critic Raymond Durgnant says, “seeks nothing less than to recapture the full blown Romantic urge.” In a swirl of color, music, dance, song and poetic imagery stylized in Gothic, Surrealistic, Expressionistic, and Classical forms, Powell and Pressburger more than succeed. In a world of artistic grandeur and sardonic humor, we follow a Poet’s (Robert Rounseville) misadventures in love and loss. The women are irresistible, but they may be all springs and clockwork inside (Moira Shearer), or they may want to steal his soul (Ludmilla Tcherina). And there’s a trickster male shape-shifter (Robert Helpmann) always trying to thwart the Poet’s endeavors. In Hoffmann’s tales and the Archers’ films there can be a sinister shiver amidst the seductive beauty; we shouldn’t be surprised that The Tales of Hoffmann inspired George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of The Dead) to become a filmmaker. The film also greatly influenced Martin Scorsese, who speaks about this lavish cinematic feast ending with a single image that he calls "the best ending credit in film history." Leonide Massine, Frederick Ashton, Ann Ayars. Technicolor.
—Greg Olson
- Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
- Principal Cast: Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine, Robert Rounseville, Pamela Brown, Ludmilla Tchérina, Ann Ayars
- Country: United Kingdom
- Year: 1951
- Running Time: 138 min.
- Producer: Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell
- Screenplay: Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell
- Cinematographers: Christopher Challis
- Editors: Reginald Mills
- Music: Jacques Offenbach
- Website: Official Film Website
- Filmography: Age of Consent (1969), They’re a Weird Mob (1966), Bluebeard’s Castle (1963), The Queen’s Guards (1961), Peeping Tom (1960), Honeymoon (1959), Night Ambush (1957), The Wild Heart (1952), Gone to Earth (1950), The Red Shoes (1948), Stairway to Heaven (1946), I Know Where I’m Going (1945), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), 49th Parallel (1941), The Murder Party (1935), The Girl in the Crowd (1935)