Win! The Tales of Hoffmann on DVD!

Posted on March 30, 2015

The lavish dance opera film The Tales of Hoffmann has been released on DVD in a specially restored edition.

Released in 1951, The Tales of Hoffmann was the follow-up to the hugely successful ballet movie The Red Shoes (1948), which made a star of ballerina Moira Shearer (pictured). Directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger brought back dancers Shearer, Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine and Ludmilla Tcherina, with the addition of Frederick Ashton as choreographer and dancer.  

The movie, filmed with Powell and Pressburger’s trademark intense colours and feverish imagery, has been newly restored. Newly discovered sequences from Act III and the Epilogue, missing from previous versions of the film, were discovered at the BFI and put back into the film.

After its UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival, the film is now available on DVD from StudioCanal’s Vintage Classic Collection.

For a chance to win, send us the answer to the following question, with your name and contact details, to editorial@dancing-times.co.uk, by April 15. The Red Shoes was inspired by a story by which Danish writer?

Zoe Anderson

Zoë was born in Edinburgh, and saw her first dance performances at the Festival there. She is the dance critic of The Independent, and has also written for The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman and Dancing Times. In 2002, she received her doctorate from the University of York for a thesis on “Nationhood and epic romance: Ariosto, Sidney, Spenser”. She is the author of The Royal Ballet: 75 Years and The Ballet Lover’s Companion.