The Tales of Hoffman

Not Philip Seymour, no matter how much I kept thinking that, but a fantasy opera instead. These are The Tales of Hoffman.

We start with Hoffman being enthralled by a dancer Stella, who is also interested in him. However Lindorf intercepts the note so he doesn't know about it. And the Muse Poetry takes the form of Nicklaus to bring Hoffman over to loving Poetry. With that set up, Hoffman tells us (and these are the three main acts of the opera) of his loves of Olympia, Giulietta and Antonia, which never ends well. It ends rather abruptly (compared with the original opera) of Stella living with Lindorf.

This looks... gorgeous. There's no other way to describe it. This definitely needs to be seen on a big screen, and the Film Society showed the new 4K restoration (on the Paramount screen, so I'm not sure how well that worked). However, being an opera, there is a lot of singing, so this movie definitely needs subtitles to follow what's going on.

Enjoyable to watch, moderately good to listen to.

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