The film tells three romantic love stories of Hoffmann with three of his woman in the past, Olympia, Giulietta, and Antonia. Although Hoffmann gradually lost each of the woman, however, he gained poetic inspiration as a result, allowing him to transform painful experiences into art.
The obvious care and effort that have gone into Hoffmann, the sometimes memorably contrived passages of virtuosity in the first half, make one reluctant to insist on the collapse of the work as a whole.
The film will never rank among my favorites in the careers of these filmmakers, but filmmaking legends as diverse as Cecil B. DeMille, Martin Scorsese and George A. Romero all adore it ...
Hard to take, despite the clear personal commitment of director Michael Powell and the enormous amount of talent on display in the photography, set design, and choreography.
