Submitted by
Neal Lofthouse
Filming "The Tales of Hoffmann"
By: Maud M. Miller
Photoplay; the Film Monthly, March 1951.
Tales of Hoffmann is probably the most "upside-down" film that has
ever happened. To begin with, Hoffmann is really three stories set
in a framework of one story - Hoffmann's search for his "love - his eternal
companion."
It is a good thing that Pamela Davies, the continuity girl, is musically
inclined. Instead of the usual kind of typewritten script in plain English,
Pamela had to cope with and carry around a fat musical score, weighing about
two and a half pounds, embroidered round the edges with a mixture of film
and musical terms. To this she added her own form of music and ballet shorthand,
to enable her to keep tabs on what was happening ... whether Robert Helpmann's
macabre eyebrows were up, down or in the middle in the fourth "take" when
he was trying to capture Hoffmann's soul in the mirror in Act Two ...
or whether Moira Shearer had completed her "Dragonfly" dance at "X", "Y"
or "Z" number of feet from the camera in "take three," Prologue.
Tales of Hoffmann is a "marriage" of music and ballet, with The
Red Shoes as the "bride" and Sir Thomas Beecham in the role of "groom"
... to carry the similie further, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
might be called the "officiating ministers" of the ceremony.
The whole affair started when that small super-charged conductor of the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was recording the music for The Red
Shoes for the same outfit. Sir Thomas conducted the first British
performance, at Drury Lane in 1910, of Offenbach's opera, just thirty
years after the composer had completed the score and he always has a
sentimental regard for it.
Beecham has had little time for film work in his busy life, but he did find
time to record the music for Victoria Hopper's film based on the life of
Mozart, called Whom the Gods Love, in 1935. Years later his imagination
was caught by the possibilities of expanding ballet technique which intrigued
him in The Red Shoes.
"If you ever thought of putting opera on the screen as you have ballet,"
he told producer Pressburger, "you might well consider Tales of
Hoffmann ... this would be an ideal choice ... you could tell the
story in music and ballet."
Messieurs Powell and Pressburger thought about it, but not for long. They
were making experiments in films, and the revival of interest in ballet,
stimulated enormously by Ninette de Valois and her Sadlers Wells Ballet,
had made the success of The Red Shoes almost a foregone conclusion.
Their minds leapt to the realisation of Sir Thomas Beecham's suggestion.
Tales of Hoffmann goes further than The Red Shoes. Music and
ballet and the miming that is an integral part of ballet tell the whole
story. The singers sing, the dancers dance and mime, but there is not one
word of actual dialogue in the film.
It could be that the scales of their decision to make Tales of
Hoffmann were tipped, finally by the fact that Hein Heckroth, the
Archers Art Director, learnt his job as a production designer in Germany,
his own country, before the war, where he designed at least eight
productions of Hoffmann.
Heckroth designs are imaginative and symbolical, rather than solid affairs
of lath and plaster. Gauze draperies, he believes, can be as effective as
solidity. For Olympia's bedroom in Act One he provides a swinging bed, set
in the centre of a circular room, with walls of muslin, dyed an exqusite
shade of pale yellow. His colour schemes were devised to help tell the story
by defining the differing atmospheres of the three episodes ... frivolous
effects of yellows, browns and iridescent cellophane for Act One, illustrating
Hoffmann's love for the doll Olympia. For the Second Act, the Venetian sequence,
he uses rich purples, golds and blacks, to symbolise the decadence of the
times of the Borgias which form the background for Hoffmann's abortive love
for Giuletta ... losing his soul in the process. Then, when Hoffmann's
tragic love for Antonia, the dying consumptive girl, occupies the screen,
Heckroth uses cool greys, and greens to heighten the dramatic effect of
the climax - when Helpmann, as Dr. Miracle, hypnotically forces the girl
to her death-song.
[In fact Hein was later quoted as saying "On screen it says the first act
takes place in Paris. This is not true - it takes place in yellow with,
of course, some other colours to play against."]
A Double Cast List
It may sound a bit confusing ... but nearly every character in the film
is played by two people - a singer and a dancer, so that we have a double
cast-list. This is another reason why the film was made back to front -
all the music was recorded first, so that Hoffmann is a "composed"
film, the cameras photographing the action as the characters danced, mimed
or sang (in dumb show) to music previously recorded, and which flooded on
to the set through the "playback" apparatus.
[This let them film it without regard to extraneous sounds, the camera
could move more freely without the usual "blimp" to mask it's noise and
Powell could give directions freely during filming.]
Preparing the musical "script" was a colossal undertaking, and, with Beecham
in charge, Offenbach's original was slightly streamlined, and condensed
from three to two and a quarter hours. Powell and Pressburger used for their
main guide a piano recording made by Beecham himself. There is one major
change from the Offenbach original - Stella, an opera singer has become
a dancer, Moira Shearer, who, instead of singing, dances an enchanting "Dragonfly"
ballet with Edmond Audran
[Ludmilla's husband, also seen as the cashier in Act 1].
Beecham also took charge of the musical casting, selecting his singers from
a "world casting directory". Robert Rounseville (Hoffmann) and Ann Ayars
(Antonia) are the only artistes to sing and act their entire roles. Both
are from American opera. Others came from Glyndebourne, and the chorus work
was provided by Sadlers Wells.
While Sir Thomas took care of this side of the film, Powell and Pressburger
assembled their dancers, relying mainly on the same team that made The
Red Shoes, Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann, Ludmilla Tcherina and her
husband, Edmond Audran, from France, and Leonide Massine, with Frederick
Ashton as choreographer
[Sir Fred is also seen as Kleinsach and Cochenille].
Massine, product of the old Russian School of Ballet, from which the purest
form of ballet derives, was very enthusiastic. Talking about the film with
him one day during the Edinburgh Festival, when he had put in an eight-hour
day at Shepperton Studios, and then flown to Edinburgh to dance his famous
role in Petrouchka, he said, that to his way of thinking, the
Hoffmann technique is "ideal for the dancer ... the choreographer
has a wider scope than on stage, the dancer must become more educated in
music, since, in Hoffmann, each is a part of the other, and not
separate art forms."
Fifty-five next August, Leonide Massine is an unforgettable personality.
Slim, self-contained, with the dedicated look of your real Russian ballet
dancer, even in repose, he gives the impression of graceful strength ...
like a kitten, his every move is fluid, almost poetic in perfection. He
arrived at the studios during Hoffmann every morning at six o'clock,
to limber up and rehearse for three hours before going on the set.
[When Robert Helpmann saw Massine doing this Helpmann jested that "The
old boy was feeling his age". In fact Massine could put the younger
Helpmann to shame with his agility & strength.]
In contrast to her role in The Red Shoes, where she spoke and acted
the role of the heroine, Moira Shearer is in her own particular element
as a dancer in Hoffmann. It is fairly well known that she was not
too happy about her role in The Red Shoes, and vowed she would never
make another film for this same reason, that she regards herself as a dancer
rather than as an actress-in-dancer-role. She worked so hard on
Hoffmann she wore herself to skin and bone, motivated by the same
passion for perfection as Massine. For four weeks of her annual leave from
Sadlers Wells Moira spent every waking minute at the studios, helping design
her own costumes, and having sessions with Frederick Ashton, on the
choreography of her dances.
In the wardrobe, at this time, too, "Operation Rush" was in progress. Terry
Morgan, who made the masks for the dolls, modelled them from a plaster cast
of Moira's features.
[Terry also did the daemon masks for The Red Shoes]
It happened to be vacation time, so Ivy Baker, of the
wardrobe department, was able to collect a few art students
[June Kirby and Brenda Gardner from Kingston School of Art, they
spent 3 weeks of their vacation making the 22 foot-high puppets
and their costumes]
to help make the frilly net and organdie ball gowns for the "girl" dolls
and the velvet coats for the "men" dolls - all puppets, manipulated by the
South African puppeteer, John Wright.
High-water-mark of all this activity was the day Moira has four scenes in
four different costumes. In the early morning she got into her "classic"
ballet costume. While the unit relaxed over its "elevenses" she changed
into the medieval dress of a court lady and back to the set. After lunch
she turned "Dragonfly" and finished the day in her "doll" make-up and the
frilly dress and pantaloons of Olympia.
It was gruelling work, but it was a great help to have her adoring husband
"Ludo" Kennedy, on hand with a nice comfy car to take her home.
