The Tales of Hoffmann (The Criterion Collection)
by Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell
Our Price: $47.50
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $37.50 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD details
Actor: Ann Ayars, Ludmilla Tchérina, Moira Shearer, Pamela Brown, Robert RounsevilleDirector: Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell
Brand: Image Entertainment
Writer: Emeric Pressburger
Writer: Michael Powell
Writer: Dennis Arundell
Writer: E.T.A. Hoffmann
Writer: Jules Barbier
Writer: Michel Carré
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Classical, Color, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 128 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-11-22
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion Collection
DVD Reviews of The Tales of Hoffmann (The Criterion Collection)
DVD Review: A freak show--but a stylish one!
Summary: 3 Stars
I saw this film in its original run. It played at the now long-lost and lamented El Capitan Theater on Mission Street in San Francisco. I was about ten at the time and I knew nothing about Offenbach's "Tales of Hoffmann." I thought the movie was preposterously overblown.
In the mid-1960s, I found a battered, second-hand recording of Sir Thomas Beecham conducting the score used in the film. Notwithstanding the truly Gawdawful English translation, I thought it was the most feeble opera recording I'd ever heard. It's only virtue was a cover photo of a remarkably unseaworthy-looking gondola.
Last week, a friend in San Francisco sent me a rave review of this DVD that had recently appeared in the SF Chronicle. I decided to renew my old acquaintance by renting a copy. After more than fifty years of contemplation and re-appraisal, I can now confidently state this about Powell and Pressburger's "Tales of Hoffmann": it's a preposterously overblown movie based on the most feeble opera recording (in truly Gawdawful English translation) that I have ever heard.
Preposterous, yes--but I have to admit that it is as stylish as it is preposterous. It is full of memorable, even haunting imagery. In the Olympia sequence, for instance, Moira Shearer is photographed from a high angle as she dances over a just-unrolled carpet that becomes a long stairway by sheer stage (not movie) magic. Marvelous!--but just a stunt. More than that, it is a stunt purely for its own sake, and utterly irrelevant to the opera or, indeed, the film.
This is a film of an opera made by people who are pretty evidently indifferent to opera. They are ballet people, and they have done their utmost to turn the opera into a ballet. To start with, the performers onscreen, in true ballet fashion, are not making music, but responding to it. Even Robert Rounseville, who actually was a singer, is shown with closed mouth while his voice rises and falls on the soundtrack. Then, since balletic time and operatic time are quite different, all sorts of bits and pieces have been snipped away from the score to smooth the stop-and-start time of opera into the continuously flowing time of ballet. The most pervasive snipping away centers on the character of Niklausse. Someone unfamiliar with the opera would be fully justified in asking these questions of the film's producers: Why is this woman dressed as a man? Why is this androgynous figure hanging around in each scene but not doing anything in particular? Why is no explanation ever offered for his/her presence? The answer is simply that Niklausse is a character whose functions and purpose are easily explainable in either spoken or sung words but virtually impossible to demonstrate in dance.
Sir Thomas Beecham was a big-time conductor who had a weakness for musical bon-bons. On occasion, he could be a towering figure in opera. His pre-WWII "Magic Flute" was the benchmark recording for decades and is still a formidable presence. Not a few people would argue that his recording of "La Boheme" with Jussi Bjorling remains the best ever. On the other hand, he could hit some awful clunkers. There was a pre-War "Faust" in English translation--ugh! And then there is this "Tales of Hoffmann." The translation Beecham chose, or at least agreed to, is appalling. Just take that as a given and pass on. His singing cast, mostly English, was generally weak. Two of the men remain better known for Gilbert and Sullivan than for any operatic work they might have done. By turning the opera into a pseudo-ballet, the singer for Hoffmann's fourfold nemesis (danced rather poncily, as the Brits would say, by Robert Helpman) is given undue prominence. The singer, a journeyman-baritone of merely adequate competence, is simply not up to it.
Hoffmann, who is sidelined as little more than observer and victim in the ballet, is actually the star and centerpiece of the opera. While it is probable that Offenbach composed the part for a traditionally reedy and nasal French lyric tenor, time has remade the rôle into a vehicle for operatic heavy hitters. In the 1930s, the great Hoffmann was Georges Thill, who could sing Massenet and Wagner to equally good effect. In the 1950s and early 60s, Sandor Konya, a great Lohengrin, was a terrific Hoffman. In recent times, the premier Hoffman has been Placido Domingo, who has stepped up to the plate to offer the supermen of opera: Otello, Parsifal and Tristan. What Offenbach may have intended to be lightly twittering vocal lines we now expect to hear as heroic vocal thrusts. Rounseville was actually a pretty good tenor, but only in light material. There is nothing heroic in his voice, more Woody Allen than Siegfried.
Finally, there is the sound of the recording, itself. Even by the unimpressive standards of the 1950s, it is distant, confined, boxy and muddy.
There you have it, a movie of an opera that is pretending to be a ballet--a stylish freak show.
Description of The Tales of Hoffmann (The Criterion Collection)
TALES OF HOFFMANN - DVD MovieClassical Music CDs
Bestsellers in Classical Music CDs
Winterscapesby London Philharmonic
Prophetic Voice; Published: 2000-07; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $2.74
Price in other shops:
The Queen, the Bear, & the Bumblebeeby Dini Petty
Children's Group; Published: 2001-03; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $13.40
Price in other shops:
Classical Kids - Beethoven Lives Upstairs CdrRelease date: 2000-04-05; Music CD
Best price: $25.98
Tchaikovsky (Life and Works (Naxos))by Malcolm Sinclair, Jeremy Siepmann
Naxos; Published: 2003-11; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $35.99
![Jose Carreras - Jubileum Concert [VHS] Image](/images/Jose-Carreras-Jubileum-Concert-VHS-1584481471-X.jpg){kind=small}
Jose Carreras - Jose Carreras - Jubileum Concert [VHS]Sling Shot; Release date: 2000-04-18; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $5.87
Price in other shops:
![Tchaikovsky - The Nutcracker / Nureyev, Park, Royal Ballet [VHS] Image](/images/Tchaikovsky-The-Nutcracker-Nureyev-Park-Royal-Ballet-VHS-156127092X-X.jpg){kind=small}
Tchaikovsky - The Nutcracker / Nureyev, Park, Royal Ballet [VHS]Kultur Video; Release date: 1997-09-09; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $29.94
Price in other shops:
![Lonely Town Lonley Street / Sergeant's Early Dream [VHS] Image](/images/Lonely-Town-Lonley-Street-Sergeant-Early-Dream-VHS-1561270857-X.jpg){kind=small}
Rambert Dance Company - Lonely Town Lonley Street / Sergeant's Early Dream [VHS]Kultur Video; Release date: 1997-10-28; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $24.99
Price in other shops:
Winter Music: Composing the Northby John Luther Adams
Wesleyan; Published: 2004-11-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $19.74
Price in other shops:
![Puccini - La Fanciulla del West / Santi, Domingo, Neblett, Royal Opera Covent Garden [VHS] Image](/images/Puccini-La-Fanciulla-del-West-Santi-Domingo-Neblett-Royal-Opera-Covent-Garden-VHS-0769720382-X.jpg){kind=small}
Puccini - La Fanciulla del West / Santi, Domingo, Neblett, Royal Opera Covent Garden [VHS]Kultur Video; Release date: 1999-05-25; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
![Verdi - Falstaff / Giulini, Bruson, Ricciarelli, Nucci, Royal Opera Covent Garden [VHS] Image](/images/Verdi-Falstaff-Giulini-Bruson-Ricciarelli-Nucci-Royal-Opera-Covent-Garden-VHS-0769720358-X.jpg){kind=small}
Verdi - Falstaff / Giulini, Bruson, Ricciarelli, Nucci, Royal Opera Covent Garden [VHS]Kultur Video; Release date: 1999-05-25; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $12.95
Price in other shops:
Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
Quai des Orfevres (The Criterion Collection)Image Entertainment; Release date: 2003-05-27; DVD
Best price: $34.25
The White Sheik (The Criterion Collection)Image Entertainment; Release date: 2003-04-29; DVD
Best price: $12.99
Price in other shops:
The Fallen Idol (The Criterion Collection)Image Entertainment; Release date: 2006-11-07; DVD
Best price: $34.29
Contempt (The Criterion Collection)Release date: 2002-12-10; DVD
Best price: $18.99
Price in other shops:
Trafic (The Criterion Collection)Image Entertainment; Release date: 2008-07-15; DVD
Best price: $19.99
Price in other shops:
Port of Shadows (The Criterion Collection)GABIN,JEAN; Release date: 2004-07-20; DVD
Best price: $14.99
Price in other shops:
Peeping Tom (The Criterion Collection)Image Entertainment; Release date: 1999-11-16; Published: 1999-11-01; DVD
Best price: $19.46
Price in other shops:
The Small Back Room (The Criterion Collection)Image Entertainment; Release date: 2008-08-19; DVD
Best price: $18.65
Price in other shops:
Essential Art House, Volume III (Ashes and Diamonds / Forbidden Games / The Hidden Fortress / Last Holiday / Richard III / Variety Lights)Release date: 2009-06-16; DVD
Best price: $29.98
Price in other shops:
Essential Art House, Volume I (Beauty and the Beast / Grand Illusion / Knife in the Water / Lord of the Flies / Rashomon / Wild Strawberries)Image Entertainment; Release date: 2008-09-09; DVD
Best price: $49.50
Price in other shops: