Import

The Tales of Hoffmann (London Films; Lopert) works hard to arrange the happy marriage of opera and movies that has always eluded cinematic matchmakers. It is a ceremonious attempt, two hours and 18 minutes long, dripping with Technicolor, crowded with talented performers and bearing the stamp of Britain's producing-directing-scripting team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, whose The Red Shoes turned many a moviegoer into a ballet fan. But Tales of Hoffmann is not likely to win many new converts to opera.

Despite such voices as Robert Rounseville's in the title role, the impeccable playing of Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic, and a charming first act in which Moira (The Red Shoes] Shearer dances as Olympia, the lifelike doll, the bulk of the picture is slow, obscure and pretentious. The script and direction, which borrow from Dali, Cocteau and Cecil B. DeMille, compound the vague symbolism of the Offenbach opera, leave the story line frayed and dangling. Whenever they are audible in the upper operatic range, the English lyrics sound banal. And the much-touted spectacle of Tales of Hoffmann's settings and costumes seems overripe and ostentatious enough to pass for a Hollywood producer's dream of paradise.

Producers Powell & Pressburger made it a point to cast the opera's voices first, record the score before turning a camera, and then engage their actors--presumably so that the players could look and perform their roles convincingly while seeming to sing like birds. But the part of a dying consumptive is played incongruously by hefty Ann Avars (who uses her own voice), and Britain's glamorous Pamela (The Lady's Not for Burning) Brown is made to look like a shorn Harpo Marx so that she can play Hoffmann's male companion. Even the performers who appear to advantage represent a disturbing clash of acting styles, e.g., Singer-Actor Rounseville plays for movie naturalism, while Actors Robert Helpmann and Leonide Massine, who are ballet dancers with little dancing to do, go in for stylized operatic mugging.

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