Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger create a phantasmagoric marriage of cinema and opera in this Oscar®-nominated adaptation of Jacques Offenbach’s 1881 opera.

Drawing on some of the greatest film, music and dance talents of the period, they transform it into a feverish swirl of colour and intense emotion as the poet Hoffmann recalls the three great loves of his life (all of whom break his heart in different ways) and how unbearable sadness inspires the most sublime artistry. Out of this decadent world of surreal, sensual delights Ludmilla Tchérina seduces us as a 19th-century dominatrix ; a menacing chorus of pan-sexual mannequins appear to have raided the dressing-up box of Marc Bolan and, most unsettling of all, there’s the image of Moira Shearer’s dismembered head as it blinks back at us.

Powell and Pressburger were amongst the most audacious, visionary filmmakers in British cinema history. This glorious 4K restoration, with previously unseen footage, offers breathtaking testimony of their dazzling visual imagination and boundless artistic daring. Restored from the original 3-strip Technicolor negative, it unleashes a feverish array of colours straight from the candy box that just beg to be seen on a cinema screen.

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