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The term ‘filmed opera’ in no way describes this phantasmagoria. Powell & Pressburger re-envisions the Offenbach work with dance sequences refracted through a cinematic prism. It’s high art made for the movies, without the condescenscion seen in Disney’s Fantasia. The stars are Moira Shearer and Robert Helpmann. Powell perfects techniques from Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes to fuse music, theater, dance and cinema; Martin Scorsese calls it a ‘composed film.’ This full restoration reinstates footage not seen since the first previews in 1951.

The Tales of Hoffmann

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 317

1951 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 133 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 7, 2022 / 39.95

Starring: Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann, Ludmilla Tchérina, Anne Ayars, Pamela Brown, Léonide Massine, Frederick Ashton, Mogens Wieth, Robert Rounseville;

— And the voices of: Robert Rounseville, Monica Sinclair, Bruce Dargavel, Fisher Morgan, Rene Soames, Dorothy Bond, Grahame Clifford, Murry Dickie, Margherita Grandi, Owen Brannigan, Ann Ayars, Joan Alexander...

Mubi is showing Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Small Back Room (1949), The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) and Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) in November and December, 2017 in the United States in the series Powell & Pressburger: Together and Apart.The story goes that when they were casting their first flat-out masterpiece together, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger sent a letter to an actress outlining a manifesto of their production company, called "the Archers." At the time, the Archers was freshly incorporated, with Powell and Pressburger sharing all credit for writing, directing, and producing, and their manifesto had five points. Point one was to ensure that they provided their financial backers with "a profit, not a loss," which may raise eyebrows among those who are used to manifestos burning with anti-capitalist fire—but then, in a system like commercial cinema, profitability buys freedom.

If you’re looking for something gently humorous, and entirely unchallenging to take your elderly parents or grandparents to, Quartet should fit the bill. And that’s exactly what you’ll get; an amiable bore full of underplayed drama and mildly spirited comedy. If the idea of film set in a retirement home for elderly musicians sounds like a drag, don’t bother, but for those who have an affinity for lighthearted, predictable productions featuring some of the best actors working in the U.K., there may be just enough to Quartet to recommend.

Based on the 1999 play by Ronald Harwood and directed by Oscar-winning actor Dustin Hoffman, Quartet is entirely set at Beecham House, named after Sir Thomas Beecham, a famously oddball British conductor. It’s a picturesque rural mansion that serves as a dwelling for over-the-hill orchestra and operatic performers who wish to spend their final years in relative comfort and like-minded companionship.

Dustin Hoffman directs a stellar cast in this bittersweet tale of ageing opera singers forced to face their mortality

Dustin Hoffman was 30 when he made his screen debut as the 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate. Three years later, in 1970, he played the 121-year-old frontiersman Jack Crabb in Arthur Penn's western Little Big Man. In his 50s he returned to star as Willy Loman and Shylock. So he knows something about the vagaries of ageing. It seems therefore not inappropriate that he makes his confident directorial debut at 75, directing a formidable ensemble cast ranging in age from the 31-year-old Sheridan Smith to actors pushing 80 and beyond in a movie adapted by the 78-year-old Ronald Harwood from his own adroitly crafted play Quartet.

Sheridan Smith plays Dr Lucy Cogan, sympathetic manager and resident physician at Beecham House, a handsomely appointed home for elderly opera singers fallen on hard times. It's...

Slumdog Millionaire star Freida Pinto captivates in Michael Winterbottom's bold reading of Hardy's tragedy

"In this life," Sir Thomas Beecham is said to have advised us, "try everything once, except incest and morris dancing" – an admonition that Michael Winterbottom, Britain's most prolific and versatile director, has followed. Indeed after 9 Songs, his venture into unsimulated sex between consenting actors, he may well be contemplating an excursion into cinematic incest. Winterbottom's movies have ranged from the music scene in Manchester to incarceration in Guantánamo, and at regular intervals he has made versions of Thomas Hardy novels on three continents.

In 1996, quite early in his career, he adapted Jude the Obscure with some fidelity to its plot and its Victorian times with Christopher Eccleston as the doomed Wessex stonemason and Kate Winslet as his deranged second wife. In 2000 he transposed The Mayor of Casterbridge to the Californian gold rush of the 1860s as The Claim,...

His life was as romantic and colourful as his exquisite music, yet his works are rarely performed today. Delius deserves better, writes Julian Lloyd Webber

No other composer polarises opinion like Delius. You either love or loathe his music. And it is rare to find someone who has grown to like it. Although this coming year – the 150th anniversary of his birth – will bring opportunities to reassess his work, that central fact will never change.

I feel as if I have known Delius's music forever. My father was a devotee and I must have heard all of his most famous works (On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, The Walk to the Paradise Garden, La Calinda, et al) well before I started playing his cello music. I always felt instinctively attuned to Delius's unique musical language, which seemed akin to watching a painting that is slowly changing in a constantly moving canvas of sound.

Goethe cursed attempts to set Faust to music – but composers kept trying regardless. As Terry Gilliam's version opens, Stuart Jeffries recounts a litany of depression, devils and duels

There is a curse on any composer rash enough to set Goethe's Faust to music. The German literary genius declared only Mozart capable of adapting his epic drama of damnation, sexual betrayal, witchcraft and freeform philosophic meditation. Selfishly, Mozart had died in 1791, almost 20 years before Goethe completed part one. So forever after, we have been doomed to suffer Faustian adaptations that the author would have disdained.

Perhaps Goethe's curse was issued because of That Thing he had with Beethoven. When Goethe met Beethoven (What a film! Hugh Bonneville as genteel, bewigged Goethe; Russell Crowe as Beethoven, surly and spoiling for a fight), the former bowed like a courtier; the latter didn't even remove his hat. You can see how...