The Tales of Hoffman. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. 1951. ⚃
[five minutes pass]
Oh, this is really the opera? I kinda assumed that this was going to be an adaptation of the story (such as it is) or something. But, no, this looks like it’s going to be a pretty traditional filmed opera?
I mean, it’s not a filmed stage production — it’s very filmic, but very… stagey…?
OK, that’s fine by me.
[the end]
All the choons seem very familiar, so I’m guessing people use Offenbach’s music out of context all over the place?
Anyway, I couldn’t get into this. It’s technically very well made; it’s full of these amazing tricks and bits and bobs, and I’m guessing that if you’re really into the opera, you’d really be into this, but… I’m not and I’m not.
A Matter of Life and Death. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger. 1946. ⚂
[half an hour passes]
This is an … odd movie. It’s a fantasia of what could have happened to people dying in the war that was just over? So we have David Niven (playing a very geriatric 27-year-old) escaping death, but agents of Heaven trying to entice him back to where he was supposed to be.
Powell & Pressburger were always very commercially-minded, and they thought this was just the thing to show a traumatised British audience? In the US, they handled this by Just Not Mentioning The War for a decade or something?
In 1999, A Matter of Life and Death was placed 20th on the British Film Institute’s list of Best 100 British films. In 2004, a poll by the magazine Total Film of 25 film critics named A Matter of Life and Death the second greatest British film ever made, behind Get Carter. It ranked 90th among critics, and 322nd among directors, in the 2012 Sight & Sound polls of the greatest films ever made.
Wat.
I do not get it.
[twenty minutes pass]
OH OH OH
Ever since that doctor guy appeared here, I though “his voice sounds awfully familiar… Is that… it that… the guy from the Wolfgang Press song?”
I love the matte paintings and the special effects, but… I still don’t get it. This is a tedious movie, among Powell & Pressburger’s worst (and they have made some stinkers).
Is this a sentimental favourite in the UK, a la It’s A Wonderful Life? Shown every Xmas? I don’t understand the attraction otherwise.
I mean, the end of the trial scene is moving and stuff, but it’s mostly just so .. ham-handed… and the trial itself, which is all about… how great Britain is? is…
I haven’t seen this one before. I started off my Kaurismäki festival with his second film (Calamari Union) by accident, because I ripped the movies in the wrong order or something.
This is a much more traditional movie than the Union, which was a goof. This is a serious adaptation of the Dostoevsky novel? And then two years passed and Kaurismäki did that goofy movie? I wonder what the story behind that was… I’m guessing… that he got money to do this movie by applying through all the proper channels, and then he couldn’t raise money for a second movie, so he just did that Calamari thing with all his pals?
I”M JUST GUESSING!
But this movie is… distressingly normal. So far.
[fifteen minutes pass]
Or is this supposed to be a parody of literary adaptations?
Hm…
[thirty minutes pass]
If this is supposed to be funny, it’s a pretty obscure joke: The gravitas of That Great Book set in the quotidian Helsinki present… But Helsinki (in 1983) looks just as exotic as 1860’s Russia. At least from this point of view.
[the end]
I’m still not sure whether this was supposed to be funny? As a drama, it kinda fails. I mean, it’s… fine…? Like any dramatisation? That is, not worth watching? But if it’s meant to be funny, it’s… not?
So I went off googling, sure that I’d find five hundred fan pages dedicated to this movie, and… there’s nothing. *crickets*
