The Tales of Hoffmann

All of Nuremberg celebrates the performance of prima ballerina Stella. Only Hoffmann is in a foul mood, because a scheme made him believe that his beloved Stella has forgotten him. While drowning his sorrows in a tavern, he tells an audience three supernatural tales of love won and lost; of living automatons, demonic creatures who steal reflections, and a sick woman whose singing condemns her to death.

With works like The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death, the British duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made film history. This adaptation of Jacques Offenbach’s opera of the same name, itself based on stories by German author E. T. A. Hoffmann, is indubitably their most colourful creation; a Technicolor spectacle without equal! To celebrate its 75th anniversary, we revisit this gorgeous ode to the magic of music and dance.