Powell, Pressburger, Hoffmann and sexual ambiguity
On NYE, watched the Powell/Pressburger film (as I gave partner the box set for Christmas I anticipate watching a lot of these in the near future), The Tales of Hoffmann, rather loosely based on the Offenbach opera.
It struck me that there was a certain slashiness about it: not only is Hoffmann constantly accompanied by his sidekick Nicklaus (a travesti role), the 3 love-affairs are all about his relationship with an eternal adversary (the antags in each all being played in this instance by Robert Helpmann, who is also his rival in the framing narrative) mediated through and around the women in question. Who are a) a mechanical doll b) a Venetian courtesan who appears to be acting as the tool for the demonic Helpmann character c) a consumptive singer who although begged to stop singing and live by her father and Hoffmann, is exhorted by the Helpmann character, a sinister occult doctor, to go with her ambition, in a very disturbing scene involving a statue of her mother, and, of course, dies (Red Shoes echo much?). At the end, in the framing narrative, the Helpmann character goes off with the ballet-dancer (Moira Shearer) who is in love with Hoffmann, who has fallen into a drunken stupor after recounting this series of amorous misadventures to a group in the local tavern.
Meanwhile Nicklaus, who in the original opera is actually possessed by The Muse of Poetry, who wants Hoffmann to dedicate himself to her and not to any mortal woman, in the film is just a sidekick who is always on scene, hanging around on the sidelines while Hoffmann falls in love with automata, has his reflection stolen, etc, looking concerned/moody/cynical/yearning/devoted etc.
I know there is some discussion of Hoffmann by Robertson Davies in The Lyre of Orpheus (Cornish trilogy), but think that is mostly about H himself as poet and composer rather than the opera, even though the opera does seem, at least in this interpretation, to support Davies's kind of Jungian readings. Otherwise I know v little about either him or the Offenbach opera, except for what a quick Google can glean.