NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

MisterWhiplash In the span of three stories involving love found and lost - one with a 'Doll' that dances and sings and then is taken apart, another with a woman who is tasked to take the titular character's reflection away for nefarious purposes (and for the love of jewels that could, gasp, turn back into wax), and lastly with a woman who has a terminal illness (in an Opera, good heavens!) and a conversation with a dead mother may make things right, or worse for Hoffmann and his love - the filmmakers get a lot of awe-inspiring visuals. It's really all about that, the love of filmmaking and, in their experiment here in bringing Opera, like REAL Opera, all singing in the dialog, it's mostly a wonderful feat in the Technicolor, 'Stage-set' style.It's a flawed masterwork - not all of it hits on all cylinders. At certain times the singing and dancing is so, well, operatic that it may be a little too easy to see that the talent is there if not the heart (this is just in parts of the second and third segments, but it was enough for me to take notice). And yet the filmmakers care so much after the world they're crafting that when all of the actors and singers and dancers and craftsmen come together in unison, it transports you into this world of theatrical exuberance and flamboyance and COLORS. This could take an art class a few weeks to analyze just on the palettes alone.As in the 'Doll' story with Moira Shearer as Olympia, practically a robot who is wound up and set off to be the 'play-thing' for the titular character only to be torn away and torn apart (literally, in magical, exquisitely tragic detail). She's dancing her ass off, and for a little while Powell, Pressburger, Shearer and company make it ias great as the Red Shoes, even that far. Just the sight of the puppets, the marionettes, and how they figure into the story is pure delight.For someone who doesn't really care for opera much... these filmmakers, for a little while, made me care through the means of their cinematic prowess. This is style and sex appeal but put into a "safe" framework. For children in the early 50's - such as Scorsese and George Romero, the biggest champions of the picture - it must've messed them up something fierce.

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.

clanciai This is one of those films you always return to, and should return to at least once a year, a phantasmagoria of artistic ambitions galore, a combined opera-ballet and film of highest technical standards of the time and well ahead of its time, receiving little acclaim and understanding in 1951 but the more so the more it has aged and proved its timelessness. The sumptuous settings, the dazzling fireworks of perpetual innovation and imagination, the splendid acting by above all Robert Helpmann, Leonide Massine, Ludmila Tcherina, Pamela Brown and Moira Shearer, the brilliant choreography all the way, all this and much else must make this film a peak of its kind in film history, since filmed and danced operas are not very common, and this one never loses in style or sustainment. Operas usually suffer from long transportation sequences, it's impossible to find an opera without boring ingredients, but this one, although slow at times in its subordination to the music, never loses its grip on the presentation. It would be recommended to the viewer, though, to take a break before the second act, because the imagery is so loaded with colourful feasts for the eye as well as for the ear, so it might feel a bit thick, like too sumptuous a banquet. The only possible objection I have found to venture against this film (after having seen it three times) is Robert Rounseville as Hoffmann. His voice is wonderful and couldn't be better, but the Hoffmann character was a bit less sturdy and complacent - the extremely intensive and high-strung E.T.A.Hoffmann with constantly too many professions on his hands at the same time, all creative, was a little more delicate and liable than the very sound and solid Rounseville - but this is just a detail. The film definitely deserve ten points.A curiosity: Lazzaro Spallanzani, an important part in the first act played by Leonide Massine, was like Hoffmann himself a very real character, a medical universal genius and Hoffmann's colleague, who happened to die today (11.2) in 1799.

T Y This is quite flat. It's a filmed stage-opera without a prayer of captivating a non-opera-fans attention, and so it trowls on the artifice. I never see what these film-makers imagine they're offering when I see these artificial stage-set worlds, which seems to appear once every ten years (Bergman's Magic Flute, Sendak's Nutcracker, Papp's Pirates of Penzance, Zeffrelli's La Traviata, Fassbinder's Querelle) except perhaps the revenge of theater-lovers on film-goers. A film-maker not hamstrung by a libretto can assemble and build moments & pacing, freely, naturally. But a director an't do anything with pacing when hampered by an already structured libretto. ...which is why there has never been a great filmed opera. They never make the jump to film. You never see the hand of a strong director behind a film-opera.Coming from Powell and Pressburger, two men who knew what the hell they were doing with the film medium, the gap between expectation and film-flailing is even more shocking. The two wizards are yoked with the dull task of providing visuals for a bunch of lyrics that move at a snail's pace. So here comes another posturing tableaux that belies complexity or thought. Whatever is happening visually or in viewers minds is over quickly, so we wait around starved for content, while various singers make silly stage-faces, and squeeze in every note of another narratively facile/tiresome aria ...and we endure crowds unwilling to move on until they rhyme and shout another chorus of no consequence to the plot. Thought and action come to a complete standstill. And we get visuals like cake-decorating.If you go in with an open mind, 20 minutes in (as with 'The Red Shoes') it's clear there's not a chance this material is going to produce a film as deep, stimulating or engaging as Black Narcissus. 40 minutes into the pointless story of the automated Olympia I was already dreading the other two pieces in this three-act-er, and whatever linking material I'd have to endure.