Watching Powell and Pressburger’s The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) again at the weekend it occurred to me that the second act, The Tale of Giulietta, is the closest British cinema gets to the extravagant weirdness of Fellini Satyricon. Or it was until Velvet Goldmine… Lavish costumes and artificial decor, feasts, orgies, lust, betrayal, sorcery, a duel…it’s all there, even a spot of androgyny if you count Pamela Brown’s role as Nicklaus.
• Ludmilla Tchérina as Giulietta
• Robert Helpmann as Dapertutto
• Robert Rounseville as Hoffmann
• Léonide Massine as Schlemil
• Pamela Brown as Nicklaus
If this is on YouTube I don’t want to know. Do the artists a favour, watch their work on DVD.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes
Why have I never seen this before? That must be remedied immediately! Thanks, John, for bringing this up.
You’re welcome! The whole film is great but this is the high point for me, I never tire of it.
Looks like Gilliam copped some ideas from this for Imaginarium especially the boat and steps shot.
2 pics below that reminds me of that film with some of Dante’s Inferno in it with Spencer Tracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante's_Inferno_(1935_film)
Isn’t this a nice picture from it
http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/images/column/41509/dantes-inferno.jpg
you guys got greenaway, prosperos books and baby of macon are pretty satyriconish
Gabriel: I wrote a post about Harry Lachman’s film last year. Powell may have been deliberately quoting that since he knew Lachman in the 1920s when they both worked for Rex Ingram, and he mentions Lachman’s Inferno in his autobiography.
Adrian: Prospero’s Books is one of the few Greenaways I actually like. I won’t go into what I dislike about the others. Oddly enough Michael Powell tried to get a film of The Tempest made for years but things never worked out. If he’d managed it in the 1950s it would have looked a lot like this.
Okay, I just watched this and am glad I did. Wow! A visual feast, to say the least. Thanks again for the recommendation!
I haven’t seen this yet.
Shame that the Criterion collection DVD is out of print
http://www.criterion.com/films/748-the-tales-of-hoffmann
The cracked mirror image is also used by Gilliam in Imaginarium.
Sorry I must have missed your Lachman post
The cracked mirror occurs also in The Red Shoes when Anton Walbrook attacks his reflection in fury. I think in that film Powell was deliberately quoting the cracked mirror from the 1935 Student von Prag which starred Walbrook and features the same soul-stealing theme which is in found later in the Tale of Giulietta. Many familiar fantasy themes go back to ETA Hoffmann’s stories and many early German films are based on them.
And of course Gilliam did a bit of overkill on the cracked mirror in Brothers Grimm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-eqtPH4mLs
Something to discover, I do not know how, but I’ll try to see it.