A fantastical visualization of Offenbach’s opera that probably reps the duo’s farthest leap in realizing an eye-poppingly colorful theatrical vision on film...

| Aug 30, 2024

To say that The Tales of Hoffmann is nightmare fuel is not to denigrate it.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 24, 2024

It’s an exhilarating mix of lavish production design, glorious music, and exquisite choreography.

| Feb 22, 2023

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Tales of Hoffmann is the final masterpiece of the filmmaking duo’s imperial phase.

| Jul 14, 2022

[The film] boasts extraordinary visuals in terms of its costumes, sets, and cinematography, but sadly falls short when it comes to its narrative, which features three curiously insubstantial tales that don't present much for the audience to engage with.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 6, 2022

A pinnacle of Technicolor expressionism, The Tales of Hoffmann is one of history's strangest, most sumptuous somethings-you-don't-see-every-day.

| Aug 24, 2017

The obvious care and effort that have gone into Hoffmann, the sometimes memorably contrived passages of virtuosity in the first half, make one reluctant to insist on the collapse of the work as a whole.

| Dec 12, 2015

Most if not all of these performers have since died; here, they live on.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 23, 2015

The film will never rank among my favorites in the careers of these filmmakers, but filmmaking legends as diverse as Cecil B. DeMille, Martin Scorsese and George A. Romero all adore it ...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 16, 2015

A gorgeous (2015) digital restoration. A fun, wittily directed and technically impressive achievement.

| Original Score: A- | Mar 13, 2015

"Hoffmann" is an immersive aesthetic experience best thought of as an art form all its own.

| Mar 12, 2015

Encore!

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 1, 2015

It's a work of hysterical excess and flamboyant extravagance and it feels unlike pretty much anything else you will ever see in a cinema.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 27, 2015

Only the slightly muddled structure detracts from what is otherwise an audacious cinematic experiment.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 26, 2015

You might compare this to the 1948 Powell and Pressburger film The Red Shoes, though in many ways it is even more hallucinatory.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 26, 2015

A worthwhile component of Powell and Pressburger's inestimable legacy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 26, 2015

As a work of pure, imaginative cinema, it comes close to genius.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 23, 2015

One of the most completely realized marriages of color, movement, and music in the medium's history.

| Nov 26, 2012

Hard to take, despite the clear personal commitment of director Michael Powell and the enormous amount of talent on display in the photography, set design, and choreography.

| Nov 26, 2012

As intensely expressionistic as any film since Caligari, and at the same time a veritable nova of springtime lan, the movie inhabits a unique puppet-theater universe, and could seduce a eunuch.

| Nov 26, 2012