Hoffman (1970) on Netflix
Janet Smith tells her fiancé Tom Mitchell she is visiting her sick grandmother, then goes to the London flat of Hoffman, an executive from her firm. He blackmailed her into the week.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.8/101,945 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Janet Smith tells her fiancé Tom Mitchell that her grandmother is unwell and that she will be away for a week. She travels instead to a London flat that belongs to Hoffman, a recently divorced executive at the company where she works, a man she barely knows. The week is not her own idea. Hoffman says he holds proof that would put Tom behind bars, and he has used it to make her come. He wants her to put Tom out of her mind and fall in love with him instead. Bitter about women, he never lays hands on her, but he wears her down with words. Janet is young and without experience, and she stays on the terms he sets.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hoffman (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer Ben Arbeid said Sellers tried to buy the prints of Hoffman and burn them, not because he was ashamed of the film but because he had recognized aspects of the inner man he thought he had hidden forever.
- Judy Cornwell, who had been in the television play, refused to stand by as backup casting after Peter Sellers insisted on starring opposite an unknown actress rather than her, whom he considered too well known.
- Alvin Rakoff said Peter Sellers first wanted to play Hoffman comically with an Austrian accent; Rakoff persuaded him to play it straight, after which Sellers went dark and slow, resisting the director's attempts to speed him up.
- Sellers, whose biographer said making Hoffman proved agony for him because there was too much of himself in it, played the role without makeup, either physical or vocal.
- Jane Asher was another candidate for the female lead in Hoffman, a role that went to Sinéad Cusack.
