In the last years of their partnership, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger decided to take on another art form in The Tales of Hoffmann. Jacques Offenbach's opera is excellently adapted with similar extravagance to The Red Shoes, only this time, rather than limiting the performance in one sequence, the entire film is sung-through and plays out on what feels like a neverending stage. The split between E.T.A. Hoffmann’s three short stories can seem a bit uneven, with Olympia’s tale the longest of the three, but the outstanding cast, the fantastic costumes and sets, and the seamless cinematography takes a spectacular route into a brilliant conclusion. Most people’s mileage of this film would depend on their appreciation of the mediums of opera and movie musicals, but fans of both would adore The Tales of Hoffmann.

This might be a quirk of the opera itself, but Olympia’s tale being the longest of the three is interesting to me, because given the ending, it says a lot about how the protagonist thought about his true love.