"Powell and Pressburger’s ballet-oriented film of Offenbach’s opera of Hoffmann’s tales . . . as rich and strange a confection as the cinema ever produced, with astonishing work from Moira Shearer as the dancing automaton Olympia (whose absurd demise,with broken springs coiling out of her severed head, I always find shocking and sad) and Robert Helpmann as Hoffmann’s multifaced archenemy. With effects technique that could have been used by Méliès and gorgeous color art direction, costuming, and cinematography."

"The Bicycle Thieves is extraordinary for the technique that the director uses to stage a street-life opera; [it’s] quite extraordinary. The stealing of the protagonist’s bicycle – that whole segment lasts 15 minutes, possibly 20 minutes. The guy has created a street opera including cars, roundabouts, work men, traffic — everything moves with such ease, with such flow. It’s like watching a painting being painted in front of you by Picasso. It’s an extraordinary way to open a film that is also an extraordinary vision of a director being able to conduct almost like a conductor with an orchestra. Just a piece of solid, 20 minute music. Almost like Mozart used to do where it’s just pure music for 10 minutes. This is pure cinema for the first 20 minutes. Pure cinema. Then it gets into the scene where the guy tries to recover his bicycle and is just driving through Milan trying to do this. But that first 20 minutes — that first opening is operatic. It’s incredibly beautiful and that makes it one of my favorite films."