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MUSIC 155
these recitatives or their paralyzing effect on the pictures. Rather, what actually happens to us is that we are caught in a terrifying clash between cinematic realism and operatic magic. Menotti's film is an abortive attempt to integrate two modes of approach which exclude each other for historical, social, and aesthetic reasons. And the spectacle of their enforced fusion may so affect a sensitive spectator or listener that he feels he is being torn asunder.
In Tales of Hoffmann no such overt clash occurs. Yet Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the art-happy creators of this extravaganza, offer the most problematic "solution" of all: instead of adjusting their opera to the screen after the manner of Gance, or concocting, with Menotti's daring, some indigestible mixture of the two media, they completely suppress photographic life for the sake of operatic mood. Their film is, in a measure, nothing but photographed theater. The students behave as they would on the stage, the Greek landscapes smell of paint, and the close-ups wasted on Rounseville's Hoffmann make it overwhelmingly clear that he is an opera singer rather than a film character. This would be defensible, however tedious, if it were inspired by a desire to render just a model performance of the work. Powell and Pressburger, however, are out for more— except perhaps in the last episode, which comes closest to canned-opera and for this very reason is despairingly arid as film. Not content with giving us a taste of the original, they avail themselves of all the cinematic tricks and illusions at their disposal to trim and enrich the original. Tales of Hoffmann unfolds on a sort of superstage crammed with ballets, color, costumes, and ornamental forms.
There is something to be said in favor of this fantastic pageant, though. Much as it is impaired by bombast and an irritating confusion of styles, it is nevertheless a spectacle which transcends the possibilities of the stage and has its moments of fascination— especially when Moira Shearer floats through iridescent space. No doubt it is cinema. But it is cinema estranged from itself because of its surrender to operatic values and meanings. The whole pageant is contrived to exalt the magic of the Offenbach opera. Having thrown out the cinema as a means of capturing real life, Powell and Pressburger reintroduce it to evolve an imagery which is essentially stage imagery, even though it could not be staged in a theater. They retrogress from all that is fresh in Lumiere to Melies's theatrical feeries. Their presumable objective is a Gesamtkunstwerk, with the opera as its nucleus— a screen work answering Werfel's deceptive dream of the rise of film to the realm of art.
Yet the cinema takes revenge upon those who desert it. Exactly like Disney's animations in Fantasia, these visual orgies consume the music