TALES OF HOFFMANN

If you saw the Powell/Pressberger film "Red Shoes" and didn't like it then you're not going to like this film either, because it's Red Shoes on steroids.

I like Red Shoes a lot but I sympathize with people who cringe at the almost too rich, over-the-top gaudiness of it. Even so, the film is a neat piece of work and so is its 1951 successor, "Tales of Hoffmann." I just saw Hoffman over the weekend at Steve Worth's house and that's what I'll talk about here.

The opera was written by Offenbach in 1880 or thereabouts. He died months before the play opened and while the music and libretto were still undergoing changes, a significant fact it turns out.

Since there were different and disputed versions of the original manuscript, successive producers took liberties with the opera and customized it to their liking.

That liability turned out to be an asset. The opera is never without backers who want to attach their own vision to it and as a result it's been staged frequently and creatively through the years, with enormous variety in the art direction.

The Powell/Pressberger version (above) is a tour de force of visual style. It ranges from a kind of dry-brushy, modern type...

...to designs derived from old tapestries and beer steins...

...to a kind of impressionistic surrealism (above) reminiscent of Odilon Redon.

I'll digress for a moment to explain that Redon (his work, above) was a French symbolist painter of the 19th Century. That movement was a precursor of Surrealism. You don't hear a lot about it anymore, and it's not really my taste, but it was tremendously influential in theatrical design.

Anyway, the dominant background style of the film is a surreal take on the traditional Romantic ballet style (above). Even in that context there's plenty of innovation. Take this shot, for example. Note the color and lighting on the archway of marionette heads.

There's a cut to a close-up as the ballerina dances closer to camera and when we return to a wider shot the colors and lighting have changed. Not only that but the marionette heads have been switched for slightly different ones. Look closely...some of them aren't the same.


 Martin Scorsese is a big fan of this film. He likes the unreality of it and claims that he learned how to compose cinematic scenes from it. He also got the idea of shooting to music from this film.

Here's the trailer. If you buy it be careful, though. Americans will want the version that plays on our electronics.

SECRETS OF "THE NUTCRACKER"

Here's three clips (above and below) of the Baryshnikov/American Ballet Theater version of "The Nutcracker." Together they add up to about 22 minutes, an eternity if you don't like ballet, and a frustratingly short time if you do. I do like it, particularly this version. It's so full of ideas!

For me this is a partly a story of initation into aristocratic secrets and values, and in that it sense it resembles Mozart's "Magic Flute". Of course in Magic Flute the theme was pretty much spelled out, and here it's only hinted at. I don't offer much evidence for this, I just talk about the way sequences make me feel, so I won't be surprised if some people disagree. That's okay. Part of the fun of art is the arguments you have after seeing it.

So let's get on with it. Here's what I'm seeing when I watch this ballet....

The opening narration introduces us to an overview of the Christmas party and the visit of Uncle Drosselmeyer, a mysterious bussinessman/scientist/wizard. Drosselmeyer distributes gifts to the children then: "Finally the surprise gift, the Nutcracker doll that Drosselmeyer creates for his favorite grandchild, Clara. With this gift Clara will enter an enchanted world where her beloved toy is transformed into a beautiful prince. Tonight is a special night for Clara. She's about to receive the gift of a dream."




The dance music at the party is charming and beautiful but is always threatening to transform into something serious and overwhelming, and constantly has to be roped back. You get the feeling that Tchaikovsky wants us to be aware of titanic forces that underlie the events of ordinary life, or maybe the mysterious nature of music itself, which always seems to demand an escalation of seriousness with every repeated phrase.

This is especially evident in the line dance which threatens to overwhelm us with power, but which is restrained by the composer from doing so. Even the incredibly cute dance of the boy soldiers threatens to get big and serious as it goes on, with one boy taking command and deftly brandishing a swinging saber.

Drosselmeyer enters and interrupts all this to test Clara by dancing with her to see if she's still in possession of the aristocratic virtues he prizes, those of self-discipline, charm, intelligence, idealism and earnestness. She is.



Satisfied that Clara, and to some extent the other kids, have passed the test and are ready for what comes next, Drosselmeyer presents his gifts. Among them are three mysterious and vaguely menacing wind-up dolls. The first is a harlequin, which executes a fun dance, but which knows nothing else of the world but fun. The second one is a dumb and awkward ballerina. She seems more human than the harlequin and is a disturbing reminder of the sluggish automaton in each of us that threatens to overwhelm our better selves. The third doll is the wild card, the exotic randomizer...the amoral barbarian with boundless energy for both good and evil.

With these dolls Drosselmeyer introduces the kids and us to the three hidden forces in the world, the three things everybody in the know will have to deal with in life.

Well, that's it...the secret message embedded in The Nutcracker. I wish I could have included a clip showing Baryshnikov as the nutcracker, and his amazing transformation into wakefulness and life. It would also have been nice to see his fight with the Mouse King, too. Oh, well. YouTube didn't have it, and the other video versions of this sequence weren't very good, so there's no use putting them here. I put up a charming video clip showing kids rehearsing for a kid version of The Nutcracker but that clip and another one vanished after I put them up. That's because I'm using a new beta version of Blogger, and it's still buggy.

WHAT ANIMATION CAN LEARN FROM BALLET

I hesitated to put this up because a lot of people don't like ballet, probably because they've only seen it on TV. It's a medium that has to be seen live. The thump on the floorboards, the sweat, the commitment and almost super-human determination of the dancers to do impossible things; none of this translates to the screen. In almost every case the people who don't like ballet are the ones who've never seen a good one.





Anyway, there are a lot of parallels between ballet and animation. The examples I'll use here come from the collaboration between Balanchine and his star ballerina, Suzanne Farrell. Balanchine fell in love with 16yr.-old Farrell who was forty years younger. They both new it couldn't work in the long run but they were determined to translate the intensity of what they were feeling into art. It was a case of two first-rate people giving everything they had to an ephemeral medium.

Here (below) is an excerpt from Joan Acocella's "Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints." Farrell eventually became a teacher and here's what Acocella says went on in her class. Click to enlarge the page.

Holy Cow! I never heard of developpe' before and now I'm dying to try it in animation. Not an animated ballet, I mean something funny that requires a long, nuanced unravelling in a single scene! And what's this thing about gathering space to make a turn? Maybe I could use that if only I could see an example of what Farrell was talking about!




Wow! True enough! An animator has to be in the moment too, in a sense. A really good and unique performer is wasted by a director with a too specific view of how an action should be done (this doesn't apply to John).


This (above) is why I don't believe in animatics. Even the wrong choices a first-rate artist/filmmaker makes give a feeling of live performance and spontaneity to a piece. Choices, good or bad, reflect the character of a filmmaker. Getting too precious in a quest for perfection is a big mistake.


BTW, I do believe in careful editing, I just don't believe in animatics, which are a tool of the devil.




Unbelievable genius! Balanchine (above) was right! You can't change artists, all you can do is develop what they already have. Clampett was great at this. He didn't try for a homogenized unit. He pushed Scribner and others to take what they were already good at and make it even better.

Much wisdom here (above)! This is one of the many reasons why animation scripts should never, ever be written by writers. Writers don't know what individual artists in the unit are good at. Only another artist could appreciate that. A good story has to be tailor-made to fit the strengths of the artists who will work on the show.