Critic Reviews
76
Metascore
Generally Favorable
positive
14(78%)
mixed
4(22%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 18 Critic Reviews
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Metascore
Metascore
100
This is a hothouse flower of pure orchidaceous strangeness, enclosed in the studio’s artificial universe, fusing cinema, opera and ballet.
100
This sublimely orchestrated marvel takes fantasy film-making to a new level, looking back to the dramatic choreography of silent cinema and forward to the colourful ecstasies of Ken Russell.
100
Watching “The Tales of Hoffmann... feels like walking through a Technicolor field of poppies; you’re happily immersed in it and often a bit lost within, eventually emerging a bit dazed and dazzled by the experience.
100
Though lacking the thematic depth that characterized the Archers’ earlier work, The Tales of Hoffmann ranks among their finest triumphs for its purely aesthetic self-justification.
100
It’s a more self-consciously artful film than its predecessor, an admirable spectacle rather than an entrancing human story. But as a work of pure, imaginative cinema, it comes close to genius.
91
This is art everyone can live for. And The Tales of Hoffmann makes it possible to live completely, gloriously within it.
80
Film is a brilliant integration of dance, story and music.
80
A hellzapoppin’ filmization of the Offenbach opera, with stops pulled out by P&P’s resident design team and choreography by Brit-ballet arch-pope Frederick Ashton, the movie was as intensely expressionistic as any film since Caligari, and at the same time a nova of springtime élan.
80
The Tales of Hoffmann has aged beautifully and reminds us of why we go to the movies in the first place: to move through the screen and find yourself happily transported to another world.
80
The triumph of aesthetics, of artistic filmmaking of a high order, is the victory to be celebrated here, and it is something you are not going to see every day. [13 Mar 2015, p.E7]
