Enchanted Evenings: Tales of Hoffmann
November 13, 2024
Enchanted Evenings: The Boundless Cinema of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Set to Jacques Offenbach’s enchanting music, an archetypal Poet (Robert Rounseville) courts women (Moira Shearer, Ludmilla Tcherina) in various locale and times, ever-pursued by his wicked nemesis (Robert Helpmann).
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Passes: $125 | $85 SIFF Members - includes full series access
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Wednesday, November 13, 2024
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, 115 min.
- 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: http://www.rialtopictures.com/hoffmann.html
- 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)