Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Adeel Hail Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

paultreloar75 There's been a bit of a boom recently of picture houses like my local emporium showing beamed-back theatrical and operatic performances in a bid to broaden their audience base. The Tales of Hoffman tries to bring opera and ballet to the cinema similarly but instead stuffs the action directly onto the celluloid and invites you to don your theatre binoculars and enjoy. And I tried to enjoy it.After a slightly heart-sinking moment towards the end of the prologue, when I realised that there was to be no narrative dialogue whatsoever and that everything was going to be sung, in that caterwauly way, I relaxed into the first of the acts and it started to become something that I could appreciate more. The sets are quite deliberately stagey and story lines are simple but there's a nice undertone of humour to what you're seeing and the screeching settles down a little.However, it has to be said that there are sections still where things feel overlong and the third act in particular just felt drawn out and not in a good way. I've read this piece elsewhere described as being cold and I have to concur. The sets and the camera work are pretty good and even some of the singing, but it's hit or miss in its cohesion.I'm glad to have gone along to watch and there were elements that worked very well, but as a whole, it wouldn't be something that I would rush to pay to see again.

basilisksamuk I love the films of Powell and Pressburger beyond all reason and at least three of Powell's films would make it into my all time top 10 favourite movies. Tales of Hoffmann is one of the few of Powell's films I hadn't previously seen so I got the DVD and sat down to watch expecting to be blown away as usual. However, my eager anticipation turned to boredom very quickly. It's hard to admit it but I just didn't like this film.The main problem for me is the music. I just hated most of it. Every now and then there's the odd fragment of a tune that was OK but for the most part it just sounded like hideous caterwauling. I've tried over the years to get into opera but in the end I realized I just don't like it and there's no point in pretending otherwise. I never want to hear this music again. The fact that the actors were syncing their lips to singers who had pre-recorded the sound didn't help either.But it isn't just the music. The whole thing is very stagey anyway and despite the expected gorgeous use of Technicolor and some beautiful set pieces it just drags. Imagine watching two hours of MTV during which time you enjoy just 2 or 3 videos and the rest is stuff you hate both musically and visually. (Actually MTV is always like that).I did like the ballet sequences and I especially liked the sections featuring Moira Shearer.So I still love Powell's films beyond all reason but I have to be honest and say this one I hated.

Panamint No doubt- this is an opera. A filmed opera (Offenbach's "The Tales of Hoffmann") with cameras pointed at a stage. If you don't care for opera it might be somewhat of a letdown, however there is a tremendous talent level involved here so the film deserves a high rating on a scale of 1 to 10.Moira Shearer dances better than ever. She neither speaks nor sings- this can be disappointing for fans of her acting movies where she is so talented and endearing. I could better cope with her role here if it was strictly as dancer, but she portrays a mechanical doll- not even human, despite the fact that her warm human qualities are so well-known from other movies. This is a dichotomy that I cannot overcome. However, her fabulous dancing and beauty remain and are unchallengeable and very watchable.The opera singer who portrays Hoffmann is just that- an opera singer. He is not an actor, nor is he really asked to either act or dance. Mr. Rounseville sings opera well but his every sound and movement is from the operatic stage. He is an opera guy.There are some very romantic scenes between Hoffmann and dancer Tcherina, and they are romantically filmed. I really liked their romance before a mirror- very well done. But again, these scenes are posed and operatic- Ms. Tcherina is not doing ballet at the time.The supporting dancers are all terrific and there are some great dance sequences but they are mostly danced to operatic music, and the overall theme is opera singing with dubbed voices for most of the participants.The music is lively. Most of it is beautiful, but some is pretty bad (the beer-garden intermission scene). This is an old opera and if you don't like opera you might be somewhat disappointed watching it despite the tremendous display of talent and fantastic sets. One set has some interesting stand-alone decorations and one item there appears to be a Juan Miro painting, possibly suspended on a wire.

tedg This is not your usual movie experience. It matters, so prepare your day accordingly.Its not as miraculous as "Red Shoes." But it is bigger. It is folded like Shoes, but less delicately. In the case of the previous project, the story was about a performer, who glided in and out of the movie and the movie within, the two overlapping magically.Here we have the same dancer, the marvelous, redheaded Moira Shearer. And her dance merges with the movie, but the movie is a heavier construction:It is a movie of an opera of a ballet performance wherein we embed three stories. The stories themselves fold into each other, each a story of Hoffman in love with a woman manipulated by an evil man-spirit. He's the same man in each case, of course. In each of the four cases (the three stories and the outside of the ballet), he prevents the lovers from uniting.These guys Powell and Pressburger, don't know much about the immediacy of storytelling. They don't know long form pacing. They don't know deep emotional engagement. But they sure know how to stage some of the most marvelous effects and build to them. They know something about photographing dance and what balance means to a camera. And they are perhaps the masters at cinematic folding: the ways of visually ambiguating the play and the audience.I may put this on my list of films you must see before you die. We'll see how I feel about it in a month, if I still am affected in my dreams.One thing that enhances this: Hoffmann is in love with Moira's Ballet character, someone he says embodies all three of his previous, lost loves, the first of which is also Moira. She's redhead. The director's love is also a redhead, one Pamela Brown who plays Hoffmann's (male) attendant. He remained devoted to her for the 25 years until her death. His attentiveness to her, hers to Hoffmann, and Hoffmann's to Moira's character is a sort of circle. Its ironic then that Moira's participation in Powell's two ballet movies ruined her career.I saw this together with "Nightdreams," a porn film from the early eighties. It was episodic like this, worked with women stereotypes like this in a context of extreme fantasy and demons, and helplessness. Same sort of notion: story, tension, attraction, obsession. A different class in terms of skill of course and cinematic breadth, and the story here is more genteel in term of genitals. But a disquieting similarity.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.