Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's followup to their enormously successful ballet film The Red Shoes was this visually splendid tour-de-force: lush color, outrageous effects, Offenbach's magnificent score and impressive dancing by Moira Shearer and others highlight the three connected tales of a poet's amorous adventures. The first concerns Olympia, a puppet passed off as a real woman to Hoffmann, who sees her torn to pieces before his eyes; the second, a Venetian courtesan, Giulietta, who captures Hoffmann's mirror image and his soul; and the third, the tragedy of a singer kept from singing, lest she suffer the fate of her mother, who died of consumption.