****/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann, Leonide Massine, Robert Rounseville
written and directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover No doubt thinking of their gushy ballet epic The Red Shoes, Pauline Kael once dismissed the pretensions of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger by declaring the duo “the Franco Zefferellis of their day.” This annoyed me intensely. Putting aside the fact that the erotic-sadist Archers seem natural Kael material, her smug put-down completely misapprehends their levelling approach to popular and elite art. A poser, Zefferelli reduces Shakespeare to soap opera and pretends it’s still Shakespeare. His ideas are schlocky and titillating, yet he insists that they’re the citadel of culture, in effect dishonouring both the articulation of what used to be called “high” art and the honest reasons we keep wallowing in trash. The Archers, meanwhile, were aware of the high/low distinction–they simply refused to enforce it, instead commingling with the sublime and the ridiculous as though they were equally critical to a healthy aesthetic diet, thus upholding Kipling’s dictum (frequently repeated in Powell’s memoirs) that “all art is one, man–one!”
Hence, The Tales of Hoffmann, which blurs the line between snobs and plebes by taking an already batshit-crazy opera by Jacques Offenbach and making it as obviously gratifying as possible. With its emphasis on fantasy and the frankly erotic, the choice of material is already far away from stereotypically austere “serious” culture, and the Archers exploit the blurring of expectations by pouring on the formal curlicues. They unleash dance on the opera, inventing a deranged dragonfly ballet and letting the romantic trials of their long-suffering protagonist play out in deliciously physical style. They let colour run riot, turning designer Hein Heckroth loose to create insane trompe l’oeil effects and searing tonal contrasts. The Archers are defiantly tactile, swooningly sensual, and completely concerned with the presence of the here and now; they’re as serious as a heart attack about every way they play.
The Tales of Hoffmann finds the famous teller of tales (tenor Robert Rounseville) thrilling a pub full of listeners with stories of his romantic travails. In the first episode, he is beguiled by a mechanical lover, Olympia (The Red Shoes veteran Moira Shearer); after his employer, Spalanzani (Léonide Massine), swindles puppet-master Coppelius (Robert Helpmann), the living doll spins out of control. In the second, Hoffmann falls for the dark and forbidding Giuletta (Ludmilla Tcherina) at a Venetian orgy. Subsequently seduced by spellbinding Dapertutta (Massine), Giuletta turns her lover Schlemil (Helpmann) and Hoffmann against each other. Finally, our hero is ensconced in love with consumptive Antonia (Ann Ayars) until evil Dr. Miracle (Helpmann) materializes to destroy her. Love is engaged, illusions are indulged, and tragedy ensues–even the linking story refuses to unite Hoffmann romantically. So why, after all this, do you feel invigorated, refreshed, ready to do romantic battle all over again?
It’s because the Archers know that it’s better to be destroyed by love than to never play the game. They’re the people who romanticized being ripped apart by romantic and artistic yearning in The Red Shoes and who decided, in Black Narcissus, that it was better to die an obsessed would-be lover than to live as an unhappy and repressed nun. And so they relate their erotic travails in pornographic detail, refusing to distinguish the agony from the ecstasy in the same way they level art and trash. The triumph and the defeat, the misery and the delight, are halves of the whole people we must inevitably become; unafraid of looking ridiculous, the Archers know that separating one aspect of your life from another is preposterous and undesirable. It’s through their fearlessness that The Tales of Hoffmann becomes the most joyous film about romantic failure ever made.
One could dicker that their English semi-contemporary Alfred Hitchcock is more intellectually precise. He was, after all, meticulous in his arguing the reasons sexual relations are impossible, tallying the many terrible indignities of men towards women and the reasons men like him will never do anything but inflict them. But while Hitchcock is more interesting as a fully-formed intellect and a bellwether of sexual politics, I will always prefer Powell and Pressburger. Unlike Hitch, the Archers never gave up: no matter how many times they were knocked down, they decided that men and women must stay together whatever the cost–and that life is not so much a series of cruel disappointments as a rising and falling. Hitchcock was ultimately a coward who would never face himself or anyone else; the Archers, by contrast, were foolishly courageous enough to stare anything in the eye if it might teach them something–or at the very least get them off.
Ergo, their conflation of the serious and the frivolous is less gauche than it first appeared to Kael’s eyes. It’s merely an attempt to not rule anything out–to eke every ounce of value from every experience, however minuscule, rather than run for cover in fear of the consequences. Powell & Pressburger draw their garish sets, plan their exuberant dances, and sweep their camera through the vivid madness of their sexual imaginations; they would sooner open up absolutely than close down and miss something they might have caught. In its total devotion to sensation and touch, The Tales of Hoffmann is the most extreme extrapolation of this ethos. You may find the whole thing overblown and grotesque, but that’s the most serious expression of two men who believed that all life was one, man–one!
THE DVD
The Criterion Collection has blessed The Tales of Hoffmann with the kick-ass DVD treatment it deserves. The full-frame transfer’s colour saturation is extremely subtle–there’s no overbrightness or bleed-through, crucial for a film whose vivid palette could easily preempt an appreciation of the intricate sets and costumes. (Unfortunately, consistent register eludes the image on yet another format, suggesting that the problem is ineradicable.) The similarly fine Dolby 1.0 mono audio balances smooth mellifluous tones and the crash of percussive sounds with aplomb. Extras are as follows:
Audio Commentary with Martin Scorsese and Bruce Eder
Though the famed Scorsese–instrumental in The Tales of Hoffmann‘s renaissance–shares mike time with music scholar Eder, the latter outshines the former. Where Scorsese takes superfluous detours into his own personal history and offers vague explications of camera placement and movement, Eder’s all business in discussing not only the considerable differences between opera and film, but also the arrangements involving conductor Thomas Beecham (a man well-identified with Offenbach’s opera) and, for good measure, producer Alexander Korda’s alterations to the film.
Interview with George A. Romero (17 mins.)
Scorsese’s main competition for one particular rental print of The Tales of Hoffmann waxes poetic on the intertwined histories of the film and his career. He proves to be better at defining the formal features of the film than Scorsese does, noting the use of double-exposures and various other trick effects that Romero would later put to use in his own films. And unlike Scorsese, who was required to tie everything into a commentary, Romero’s autobiographical tangents make more sense in this interview context.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (13 mins.)
You’d hope that a rarely-seen Powell short in the same vein as The Tales of Hoffmann would be a revelation. Alas, this 1956 ballet rendition of Goethe’s story is pretty flat thanks to some tinny sound and a seriously lame poetic voiceover. The fact that it was cut from 30 minutes to 13 very likely has a lot to do with its failure, but the solid visuals can’t compete with the words in any event. For Powell die-hards only.
Rounding out the package: galleries of production stills, promotional materials, and Hein Heckroth’s deliciously vivid production art; excellent liner notes by scholar Ian Christie (which place the opera and the film in their respective historical contexts); and The Tales of Hoffmann‘s trailer.
127 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; DVD-9; Region One; Criterion
