Submitted by
Neal Lofthouse
The Tales of Hoffmann
Picturegoer October 14th 1950
"Picturegoer" tracks into Shepperton Studios to shoot an
on-the-set account of the biggest film experiment since "The Red
Shoes"
Heartened by the sucess of 'The Red Shoes', those two enterprising
individualists, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, went looking
for new bounds to break and new horizons to conquer.
They chose for their latest campaign a screen version of
Offenbach's "The Tales of Hoffmann," the opera.
Their choice is a piece of concentrated fantasy, a fairy tale for
adults, a parable, perhaps, of warring forces of good and evil, with a
magician as the villain of the piece and the theft of a man's
relection through the wiles of a beautiful siren as its dramatic
highlight.
Well !
Obviously, 'The Tales of Hoffmann' has presented a challenge to
their ingenuity and imagination such as Powell and Pressburger revel
in accepting.
They have tackled the challenge boldly - that much you can see
from Jarche's striking pictures on these pages.
[Sadly not available]
An opera singer,
Robert Rounseville, plays the leading man. Ballet dancers Moira
Shearer and Ludmilla Tchérina are the principal women in the cast:
Robert Helpmann is the magician.
Sir Thomas Beecham worked out a musical scenario and the entire
score and musical effects were recorded before any of the performers
went into the studio.
Then the picture started with the dancers lip-synchronizing to the
pre-recodred music.
The result of this subtle blend of music, ballet and imaginative,
dream-like settings is something that most picturegoers will await
with eagerness.
Duncan Blair
