The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) on Netflix
NR19512h 7mDramaFantasyMusicRomance
In Nuremberg, the poet Hoffmann watches the ballerina Stella dance. His rival, Councillor Lindorf, intercepts her note, and in a tavern Hoffmann tells students of three women he once loved.
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Trailer
Plot summary
The celebrated poet Hoffmann attends a performance in Nuremberg by the prima ballerina Stella, whom he admires. She sends him a note asking him to meet her afterward, but his rival, Councillor Lindorf, intercepts it. In the interval Hoffmann goes to a tavern, where he tells a crowd of reverential students the story of a clown named Kleinzach and three tales of women he once loved: Olympia, Giulietta and Antonia. He drinks as he talks. The first tale returns him to his student days in Paris, where he wanders into the shop of the spectacle maker Coppelius and the scientist Spalanzani.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Tales of Hoffmann (1951)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Decca got London Films' permission to release the soundtrack album, but Sir Thomas Beecham sued, saying it did not represent his interpretation because of the changes made for the film. On 20 March 1951 he failed to win a High Court injunction, but the album was labeled as taken from the soundtrack.
- The whole opera was prerecorded to make the soundtrack and the film was cut to the rhythms of the music; there is no dialogue, and apart from Robert Rounseville and Ann Ayars none of the actors sang their own roles.
- The cast mixed established British singers, such as Grahame Clifford, a leading comedian with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and Kathleen Ferrier, who was offered the role of Nicklausse but declined it.
- Each of the three tales is coded to a primary color: yellow contours for the Paris tale of Olympia, dark colors especially red for the Venetian tale of Giulietta, and shades of blue for the final Greek tale of Antonia.
- The opening of the Giulietta tale, in which she performs the "Barcarolle", was staged on a gondola that moves through deliberately artificial Venetian canals but does not seem to actually move on the water.
