abandoning life for art
by Douglas Messerli
Michael
Powell, Emeric Pressburger, and Dennis Arundell (screenplay, based on the opera
by Jacques Offenbach, with a libretto by Jules Barbier, which, in turn was
based on stories by E. T. A. Hoffmann), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
(directors) The Tales of Hoffmann /
1951
If Powell and
Pressburger’s Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes and Powell’s Peeping Tom (of which I write above) are
all more successful works of cinema, The
Tales of Hoffmann, an opera-ballet based on the Offenbach opera, is perhaps
the work most suitable to their temperaments. In this work, given the
transformation of Hoffmann’s Stella from an opera singer to a ballerina and the
balletic-inspired performance of the Olympia section (both figures performed by
The Red Shoes dancer Moira Shearer),
Powell and Pressburger could move almost entirely away from the confines of
realism, creating a fantasy completely given over to the theatrical in the name
of art. 
At times it appears that Technicolor was
invented with Powell’s and Pressburger’s sensibilities in mind. Almost all of
their works in color use the brightly saturated reds, yellows, greens, and
blues as if they were as abstract colorists instead of storytellers. And the
looseness of Offenbach’s tripartite tale makes it possible for the directors to
pretty much abandon plot. 
The high art stodginess of the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, along with the balletic
assertiveness of Léonide Massine bring this work a kind of inherent gravitas in
which singers and dancers appear to be striving to emphasize their mastery—all
which is gloriously undercut by production and costume designer’s Hein
Heckroth’s decision to let loose nearly every gay-decorating convention of
overwrought kitsch: rows and rows and rows of gauzy curtains, overwrought
baroque bric-a-brac strewn about the sets, brocaded purple waist-coats (for
Hoffmann, sternly sung by the pudgy-faced Robert Rounseville), and miles of
tasseled cloaks for the work’s scowling villains Lindorf, Coppélius,
Dapertutto, and Dr. Miracle (all played by Robert Helpmann and sung by Bruch
Dargavel). Add to this enough makeup spread across faces in a way that suggests
severe tattooing instead of merely highlighting and prettifying eyes, cheeks,
and noses, and an absolutely campy mix of anachronistic dresses, hats, pants,
and other attire, and one ends up with a work that makes its audiences want to
laugh every time they might be expected to sigh or even cry. Even Cecil B.
DeMille, hardly known for his subtle presentations of history—who wrote Powell
and Pressburger saying “For the first time in my life I was treated to Grand
Opera where the beauty, power and scope of the music was equally matched by the
visual presentation”—could not have conjured up a Venetian bordello orgy as
grand as the gaudy technicolor bash the directors cooked up for The Tales of Hoffmann. The evil magician
Dapertutto, with curlicues of green paint strewn across
his cheeks, struts among countless candelabrums of rainbow-colored melted
candles, gathering their wax to transform them into emeralds, rubies,
amethysts, and diamonds, while the courtesan Giulietta (Ludmilla Tchérina)
exits her flying gondola in a tight-fitting black pantsuit that might seem more
at home in a Fellini film. The bedded revelers lay in a circle around a huge
table filled with gastronomic treats not witnessed since the days of Trimalcio’s
dinner party in Petronius’ Satyricon.
Yet as silly as all of this may seem,
there’s a definite method in all the filmmakers’ mad commitment to imagery and
scenarios that are so obviously “over the top.” And despite the utterly kitsch
expressions of art, the way in which Powell and Pressburger have given
themselves up to the artificiality of work they have created is so fascinating
and spectacular that any critical judgment seems absolutely pointless. Good art
or bad art is quite irrelevant when witnessing an artifact created only to be
goggled over. To be truly “kitsch” it would to pretend to be something it was
not. And as for camp, neither the directors nor the performers (except for the
remnant of the Olympia doll) ever winks. If their utter seriousness is, at
times, fairly comic, so is that part of the film’s charm.
The ravishingly beautiful automaton of
the first tale, Olympia, is wound up so tight that she literally spins, from
the Hoffmann’s arms, out of control around the golden swathed ballroom where her
marionette friends jingle into existence with no strings attached. Her demise
in the hands of the vengeful Coppélius, in which he quite literally tears her
apart limb by limb, ends with her poor dummy of a suitor, Hoffmann, looking
down up her severed head—having broken the spectacles that blind him from the
truth—as he watches her eyes snapping open and closed as if she were still in
semi-conscious shock. Indeed nearly every object is set into self-destructive
motion as each is given an opportunity to temporarily sing and dance in
Powell’s and Pressburger’s fantastical production: weathercocks spin in the
wind in rhythm with Offenbach’s overture, the hand-carved grotesques decorating
clocks spring into motion in the opera’s prologue, and in the final “story,”
the statuary figure of Antonia’s (Ann Ayers) opera diva mother begins to sing,
luring her consumptive daughter to her death.
Each of the humans of this work,
meanwhile, attempts to become a work of art. If the original opera might seemed
to be a work in which the hero devoted his life to the discovery of love, here
he and all the others seem hell-bent on giving up their breathing, sentient
selves to become vessels or creators of art, soon after to be destroyed or to
destroy others in the act. In short, the central human figures of this work are
perfectly willing to hand over their souls to the devil-art in order to
continue to dance, write, and sing.
The ballerina Stella ends up holding the
arm of the satanic Lindorf; Giulietta has already given her soul (and body)
over to Dapertutto before Hoffmann falls in love; Antonia, choses to pursue her
singing rather than protect her health; and Hoffmann, by film’s end, having
finished the telling of his tales, has drunk himself in oblivion. Only
Hoffmann’s dear companion Nicklaus (played by Pamela Brown) seems to stand
apart from the others, attempting to warn his friend as Hoffmann clumsily
stomps through life; the directors and writers obviously felt that they had to
heavily abridge the role of this figure representing such a faithful and
enduring love so that his friendship has utterly no effect.
The film ends with yet another flourish
of its total artificiality, showing Sir Thomas Beecham, in tails, baton erect,
conducting the work’s final chords, before closing his score, upon which the
cinematographers quickly stamp a golden seal declaring their “product” to be
“made in England.”
Los Angeles,
April 11, 2015
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