There was no script… we simply followed the score.
This is a spectacular, complex and unusual film from an extraordinary set of film
makers, one that crosses boundaries and responded to the formality of opera and
ballet with something like the improvisational techniques of silent film. The
director, Michael Powell, was always at pains to highlight the contributions of
his team too all of whom were among “the most talented artists in the World…”
who brought “excellent ideas…” leaving him the job to “choose from them and to
elaborate, little by little the film you saw.” 1 So,
some cinematic "jazz" with which to capture the dance and the song, with the
finest players and with Pressburger and Powell exercising the kind of
leadership that only true improv virtuosi can command. Powell's ambition was to "compose film" in the same as the score had been created and to do that, he started with that music and composed scenes, shots and segments in silence, working to the rhythms and the notations of
Based on Jacques Offenbach’s 1881 opera Les
contes d’Hoffmann, which was itself inspired by the stories of E. T. A. Hoffmann a
German writer, artist and musician from the turn of the nineteenth century who
was very influential, also writing the story that became The Nutcracker.
His stories were fantastic and this strangeness was as perfect for adaptation
on stage as it is for film. Here The Archers recorded Offenbach’s music first
with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the mighty Sir Thomas
Beecham and including world class singers from the Royal Opera House company
and elsewhere.
This was a screening on a fresh 35mm print taken from the BFI’s national archive and the colours were good enough to eat although I was prevented from nibbling the screen by the diligence of the BFI’s long-suffering stewards. This was my first-time viewing Tales even though I’ve had the Blu-ray of the 2015 restoration for some time; some things just have to be done right and a packed NFT1 is the only way to experience one of the peaks of The Archers’ glory years.
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| Moira Shearer |
The Tale of Moira
Yes. It was more daring but also rather clumsily put
together. … Powell put all the action into the first third of his film and was
then left with long static stretches almost to the end. For a man with such a
gift for cinematic effect it seemed very odd. 2
Moira Shearer was never a women lacking opinion and you
can imagine feisty discussions across the breakfast table with husband Ludovic
Kennedy throughout their long marriage. Shearer had a complex relationship with
ballet and film after her experience with the hugely successful The Red Shoes.
Pressburger she liked, Powell much less so, and yet she respected his abilities
working with him three times, the last on Peeping Tom when another actor had
dropped out – according to Powell - with a cameo that fills the film with life
and yet failed to prepare her for the end product; another example of “Michael’s
sadistic streak” for her.
Here she was lured not only by the reassuring presence of
Robert Helpmann and Leonide Massine but especially by the choreography of Frederick
Ashton with Powell and his cameraman Christopher Challis filming with less editing
and artifice than the director used, with Jack Cardiff, on The Red Shoes
– and once again I can heartily recommend Pamela Hutchinson’s new book on that
fascinating subject3. Here Fred was the director and
as Shearer said in 1994, “This was purely dance - it was choreography... It
was very enjoyable - we had to hit a few marks for the lighting and there was a
certain amount of stopping and starting for technical reasons, but working with
Fred was such a pleasure and relief.”
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| Moira 3, Ludmilla 1 |
There is certainly more uninterrupted footage of Shearer’s
abilities and, as she said herself, her technique is not only better than three
years’ earlier but she is allowed more room for expression by Ashton. The
Red Shoes may be the best ballet film but these sequences are the best of
Shearer’s ballet on screen; incredible energy and control even on perfect point
as she whirls around flicking her legs in high step with the metronomic quality
of an automaton during the Olympia/Doll sequence and so expressive during the opening
segment set in a theatre for The Ballet of the Enchanted Dragonfly.
She has three main dances and dominates the film’s first hour and exhibits the honed physique of a top-level prima, almost
painfully thin but with the leg strength of a professional footballer. Ballet
is surely the most demanding of the arts hence the confusions surrounding her
life and that of her character in The Red Shoes. Art for art’s sake is
the aim with both films but none of these players got here without the
thousands of hours isolated dedication. No imposters here, just world-class practitioners as Powell said.
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| Robert Helpmann as Lindorf |
“Helpmann’s theatrical persona is almost more than an ordinary film could bear…” 4
Which brings me to the genius known as Robert Helpmann who is also freed up by this film compared with The Red Shoes, he plays Hoffmann’s nemesis Councillor Lindorf and various other characters throughout – Coppélius, Dapertutto, Dr Miracle - who attempt to thwart the writer’s romantic ambition. He’s so dynamic both as an actor and dancer, having worked with the Royal Ballet - the Vic-Wells Ballet as it began - and acted through most of his career in mainly Shakespearean roles as well as other classic theatre. He is so expressive and fits in perfectly with the mad make-up of Connie Reeve and the eye-popping Oscar-nominated designs of Hein Heckroth.
Helpmann was lauded on stage and occasionally on screen, he danced with Margot Fonteyn in Frederick Ashton's Façade and many more and, of course with Shearer as her star rose. You have to wonder again at why there was so much of a reaction to her and not him. As ballet critic Clive Barnes wrote after a full and frank exchange with Shearer for a Dance Magazine interview in 1962: I wonder how much we in British ballet circles were prejudiced, consciously or subconsciously, against the glamorous Shearer.
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| Let the regaling commence... Robert Rounseville starts singing... |
The Tales of Hoffman
The story begins in Nurnberg in the Opera House where a
young writer, Hoffmann (the opera singer, Robert Rounseville, later to sing You’ll
Never Walk Alone in Carousel) is watching Stella (Shearer) a ballet
dancer performing The Ballet of the Enchanted Dragonfly. Watching also
is Lindorf who intercepts a note she has written to the writer on a doily
setting the scene for another romantic disappointment. In his BFI Classics book on the film,
Would you hear the three tales of my folly of love?
In scenes eerily reminiscent of our school trip to see King
Lear at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1979 during which we took a half-time
drink in the Shakespeare public house, never to return to the play… Hoffmann joins
his pals in Luther’s Tavern during the intermission and, as the drink flows and
the ornate pipes are passed around, Hoffmann, already moody and disheartened,
decides to regale his pals with three stories of his thwarted love. Whilst Lindorf
is traditionally played by the same actor, this section of the opera normally
involves three different singers or, in this case, two dancers miming and one
singer singing.
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| Leonide Massine and Moira Shearer |
The Tale of Olympia
Shearer returns in the remarkable puppet dance of Olympia,
an automaton devised by scientist Spalanzani (Grahame Clifford) and magic
spectacle maker Coppélius (Helpmann) who proves that animated beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all, as they try to convince Hoffmann that not only her
intentions but her entire being is true… Shearer’s movement as the puppet is
technically superb and she holds the eye with her control, precision and
bounce; she snaps into positions and out again with an almost contemptuous ease; she's here to show what she can do encouraged by the best choreographer in the business. She's matched by Helpmann's charismatic energy as well as the verve and skill of Ashton himself playing the half human/half puppet, Cochenille.
The Tale of Giulietta
A completely different style is required for this take as
we find Hoffmann in Venice pursuing the heart of Giulietta as danced by Ludmilla
Tchérina another Red Shoes alumnus and another prima ballerina who danced
across Europe but primarily as principal dancer with the Ballet des
Champs-Élysées. She is earthier than Shearer and well able to play the femme
fatale in this battle for soul and sensuality as, under the influence of the
magician Dapertutto (Helpmann) Giulietta captures Hoffmann’s reflection and gains
possession of his soul. The writer must duel with her former paramour, Schlemil
(another Red Shoes star, Léonide Massine) to get the key to free her but
is it just another ruse… your guess, it is after all, an opera based on a
fantasy.
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| Helpmann and Ludmilla Tchérina |
The Tale of Antonia
This final segment is, in the restored version, the longest
and most purely operatic with Hoffman in love with Antonia played and sung by
the American opera singer, and future Dr Kildare star, Ann Ayars. Antonia’s mother,
also a singer, has already died young as a result of consumption and her father
hides her away on a Greek island – a magnificent setting again from Heckroth –
in an attempt to prevent her from singing and also succumbing to the same fate.
This time Helpmann plays Dr Miracle who was actually responsible for the death of Antonia’s mother and who claims to channel the spirit of her mother in encouraging her to sing and die. There is magnificent duet between Ayars and Miracle (sung by Bruce Dargavel) as the spectral conclusion is reached among some of the film’s most powerful imagery utilising more in camera trickery than the rest of the film combined. It almost does for pure opera what The Red Shoes did for cinematic ballet and no doubt there was a similar dislocation of certain snobby noses.
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| Ann Ayars and Robert Rounseville |
After the fatal climax it’s back to the opera’s gorgeous
main theme and multiple Shearer’s converging into one as she completes the
dance at the Opera House before heading to find her lover in a most dishevelled
state at the cellar; having told and drunk too much, forever to be unlucky in
love and outmanoeuvred by Lindorf…
The film cuts to Sir Thomas Beecham conducting the last
few notes and closing the book as a Made in England stamp is thumped down – The
Archer’s pride in helping to establish an English operatic tradition just as
Shearer’s boss, Dame Ninette de Valois, the Irish-born, Russian trained former
dancer who was aiming to create an English tradition in ballet through the
Royal Ballet.
Again, this underlines the creative and improvisational power
of Powell and Pressburger, the former may have known more about ballet than he
let on but it was the latter who understood opera. The fact that they could
take all of these high-powered talents and produce this coherent whole says so
much. Perhaps shooting the film as a silent was liberating with Thelma Schoonmaker
says in the Studio Canal Blu-ray interview, that her former husband kept on
saying how free he felt. Maybe not amongst their greatest films Hoffmann is surely
the finest example of their abilities as collaborators.
It's also an eminently rewatchable film as more details
of dance, design and direction are revealed with every viewing. A film for life
and love.
1. Interview
by Bertrand Tavenier in Midi-Minuit Fantastique, October 1968
2. An
Autobiography of British Cinema (1997), Brian McFarlane, Methuen/BFI
3. The
Red Shoes (2023), Pamela Hutchinson, BFI/Palgrave Macmillan
4. The
Tales of Hoffmann (2013), William Germano, BFI/Palgrave Macmillan
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| Sir Thomas Beecham |
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| Ludmilla Tchérina and the woman she mimes for, Margherita Grandi |
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| Pamela Brown |
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| Shearer dancing with Edmond Audran (Tchérina's husband) |
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| An orchestra of Helpmanns... 50 years before The Matrix! |
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