The first film version of the famous opera, The Tales of Hoffmann (Hoffmanns Erzählungen) is a German silent film, directed by Richard Oswald. Like the stage versions before it, the film tells the story of German Romanticist author E. T. A. Hoffmann as he stumbles his way through the tales he himself wrote, finding both romance and danger along the way.
Unique for this version is a flashback prologue featuring a teenaged Hoffmann, which sets up the rest of the story. (Kurt Wolowsky and Erich Kaiser-Titz play the young and adult Hoffmann, respectively.) In exchange, the Framing Device of the writer telling the tales to his drinking buddies was cut, removing the implication that Hoffmann might be an Unreliable Narrator.
Oh, and look out for a pre-Caligari Werner Krauss as the evil Conte Dapertutto.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Wimp: Lindorf, who the film basically changes from Hoffmann's Arch-Enemy to just some rich guy Stella is cheating on. It doesn't help that the implication that the other villains either are or represent different aspects of him has also been Adapted Out.
- Adaptation Distillation: Manages to distill the basic plot of the opera down to an hour and ten minuters, even with an additional prologue.
- Adaptation Expansion: The prologue, which shows a young Hoffmann meeting many of his future friends and enemies. Notably, the Coppélius segment is actually based on a scene from The Sandman (1816), which is not included in the opera itself.
- Adaptation Explanation Extrication:
- Inverted. The film creates an explanation for why Coppélius wanted to tear our protagonist's eyes out. He was trying to make some sort of Philosopher's Stone, using a process which apparently required the eyes of multiple children.
- Also Inverted with Dr. Mirakel, who has now gained a motive for murdering Angela and her daughter Antonia. Namely, both of them refused the "good" doctor's sexual advances.
- Adapted Out: Nicklausse/The Muse doesn't appear. Possibly because the film downplays Hoffmann's role as The Storyteller.
- Age-Gap Romance: Hoffmann is at least a decade older than Antonia, who is first seen playing with him as a toddler. 18 years later, they're together. (This element is unique to this adaptation. In the original Rath Krespel story, the narrator only meets Antonia a few years before her death, long after the passing of her mother).
- Biography à Clef: Much like the opera, the film presents the events from three of Hoffmann's tales as having happened to the man himself. (The actual stories were more prone to using an Author Avatar and/or a Direct Line to the Author.)
- Compressed Adaptation: In the opera, Hoffmann's stories are said to have happened years apart (that is, assuming that they happened at all.) Here however, there is no explicit Time Skip after the prologue, which has the side effect of making Hoffmann even more of a Serial Romeo who has all four of his romances in one day!
- Decomposite Character: Played With. The villains and love interests of Hoffmann's tales are no longer implied to be this In-Universe... meaning that the film ends up doing this on a meta level by explicitly making them different people. (This is somewhat Truer to the Text, as there was no continuity between the original stories.)
- Demythification: Despite being a fantasy film, it actually strips The Tale of Giulietta of all supernatural elements. Dapertutto is not an Evil Sorceror, Schlemil hasn't given up his shadow, and Hoffmann never loses his reflection (even though the original story was called The Lost Reflection!
- Downer Ending: All of Hoffmann's relationships end in tragedy, then he has an Imagine Spot in which all of his enemies show up to mock him. The End.
- Duel to the Death: Hoffmann and Schlemil have a sword fight over Giulietta's love. Hoffmann wins, killing Schlemil, but it doesn't really matter as Giulietta has made a getaway along with Dapertutto, using the duel as a distraction.
- Good Adultery, Bad Adultery:
- The present day Hoffmann is introduced romancing Stella, who is — in this version — already engaged to Lindorf.
- Giulietta plats with the emotions of both Hoffmann and Schlemil before running off with Dapertutto.
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Fridge Logic dictates that Hoffmann was likely already involved with Antonia while having his other romances. (In the opera, they are implied to have met during the Time Skip inbetween the acts.)
- Historical Domain Character: E. T. A. Hoffmann himself, of course. As well as his aunt and uncle, and his actor friend Ludvig Devrient.
- Historical In-Joke: The young Hoffmann gets chided and sent to his room by his aunt and uncle for drawing an unflattering picture of Conte Dapertutto. The real Hoffmann actually did get in trouble — even losing his job — for drawing political caricatures.
- Involuntary Dance: Dr. Mirakel's method of assassination is changed from involuntary singing to this.
- Karma Houdini: All of the villains, really. Dapertutto rund off with Giulietta, having robbed a now dead man. Dr. Mirakel murders both Angela and Antonia before successfully covering it up, and while Coppélius and Spalanzani do respectively get scammed and have their expensive automation destroyed, they are never brought to justice for their attempted murder (which is implied to have been a fluke in a series of successful murders.)
- Lost in Imitation: Despite being a silent movie, the film is clearly based more on the opera than on E. T. A. Hoffmann's original stories. Granted, the opera was itself adapted from a stage play.
- Magic Cauldron: Used by the alchemists Coppelius and Spalanzani during their experiment (well, it's really more of a big hanging cooking pot, but it fills the same function.)
- May–December Romance: Dr. Mirakel — who is even older than Hoffmann, with visibly graying hair in the present — wants this to happen between himself and Antonia, but she isn't having any of it.
- Musical Assassin: Dr. Mirakel kills his victims by playing them the violin. This compels them to dance, eventually killing them by exhaustion.
- The Music Meister: Dr. Mirakel kills his victims by playing them the violin. This compels them to dance, eventually killing them by exhaustion.
- Nephewism: Hoffmann lives with his aunt and uncle at the start of the film, which is Truth in Television. His mother moved back in with her siblings after she and Hoffmann's father seperated.
- Random Events Plot: A side effect of cutting the framing device which gave the opera an anthology format is that Hoffmann seems to rum straight from each dramatic encounter to the next.
- Robot Girl: Olympia. Hoffmann falls in love with her, unaware of her true nature, and is rather shocked to learn the truth. In fact, this version of the character might actually be the first example of this trope in movie history.
- Setting Update: While the opera is set in multiple countries across Europe, the characters in the film all seem to live in a pair of nearby towns, most of them within walking distance of one another.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Schlemil manages to win a fortune at the gaming table, but he never gets to enjoy any of it as Hoffmann stabs him shortly thereafter, with Dapertutto stealing much of his winnings.
- Tamer and Chaster: This is probably one of the more "family-friendly" interpretations of The Tale of Giulietta. While the titular protagonist herself is still a seductress, her house does not serve as a literal brothel, as is often the case in the opera.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Spalanzani, Coppélius, Mirakel and Dapertutto are all well-liked public figures whose illicit deeds are largely unknown, even by the end of the film.
