The Tales of Hoffmann (1951)

Not Recommended

UK

Feature Film

Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Writers: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Dennis Arundell, Jules Barbier

Cinematographer: Christopher Challis

Cast: Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine, Robert Rounseville, Pamela Brown, Ludmilla Tchérina, Ann Ayars

Although it features resplendent production design, lustrous photography, and some spellbindingly beautiful dancing from Moira Shearer, this adaptation from Powell and Pressburger of Jacques Offenbach's opera – comprising of three grand tales of love and loss, plus prologue and epilogue – is surprisingly bland and uninvolving in all of its opulence and grandeur (at least, that is, when Shearer is absent from the screen). Iain.Stott