Hoffman (1970)

The seventies was not a particularly good decade for Peter Sellers.He made one bomb after another.His career lost direction and he lost the magic which propelled him to stardom in the fifties.I saw many of these but thankfully not this one which I have just seen.It really is dire despite the fans of Sellers claiming it is a forgotten masterpiece.Do your self a favour,when it comes on TV again,switch to another channel.

I went into this not expecting much given that a lot of Sellers' output is somewhat dire. However, I was pleasantly surprised by this relativity unknown movie. Sellers plays an older man who is attempting to romance a younger woman by coercion. At the start of the movie we are not sure of the setup, Sellers ramps up the creep tension in the opening scenes, this is a long way from his usual slapstick but effectively done. I'm not sure Sellers is a good actor in the traditional sense, his expressions and speech are somewhat over-mannered, but it's effective in this setting. The target of Sellers' affection spends the first 30 minutes of the movie screwing up her face like a naughty 5 year old, but she is redeemed by her almost unbearable cuteness. Anyway, without giving too much away, she is forced into a choice. What transpires is quite interesting, in the context of the movie the decision she makes is assumed to be the correct one given the context, a happy ending as such. However, to the modern viewer the situation seems more morally ambiguous and the rationale implied somewhat self serving and narrow, who is exploiting who? An interesting movie for both Sellers' performance and as a time capsule of 60s morality.

Hoffman is nearly 40 years old now, but still, because of the Sellers name, people judge it as if it is supposed to be a comedy. It's not and was never intended as one. It's a portrait of a middle age man so damaged he can't love anymore, and so tries mightily to indulge in lust with a young girl, but he can't even do that correctly, because like all damaged people he was once a true romantic. Once he gets Mrs. Smith in his home, even though it's palpable he wants her sexually in the worst ways, he attempts to woo her – but not sappily; he wants to woo her with a destructive bent that is determined to prove that her love could never be honest since it can't accept anything but facile niceties. He wants to prove his own heart wrong. And if that sounds insane, then the complexity of love must have eluded you; you get old enough, you see how twisted and ugly and naked and needy the human heart really is. This is not a film with action (as if tons of quick cuts and explosions guarantee interesting). It's a Before Sunset type of film, with lots of interesting dialogue and little in the way of other people or the world intruding. The movie centers on two characters who are drawn to one another based on a deep seated pain. Sellers' Hoffman blackmails Mrs. Smith to spend a week with him -- but as I was watching it, I realized that Mrs. Smith had some pain and doubt in her heart just like Hoffman – she's just younger and it hasn't stung as deeply yet; and she must have sent him some signals before the blackmail, because attraction is usually a two way street. She ostensibly is there to save her fiancé from jail time (she and her fiancé and Sellers all work for the same company, but Sellers is an executive who has knowledge of thefts committed by the low-rung employee fiancé)– and her terror at first isn't faked – she's not a drama character being analyzed, she's a real person who is struggling with guilt at lying to her fiancé and fear at not being able to read Hoffman's emotions. But while her initial reactions and emotions aren't forced, they aren't all there is to her presence here, because her second try to leave reveals something more complex – she's trying to convince herself of outrage. Why would she go to all the trouble to dress and find the key to escape only to quit once Sellers sleepwalked her back to bed? She could have waited for him to fall back to sleep soundly – he does this easily. And why would she try to leave again anyway, knowing that the same horrible fate for her fiancé was still on the table? Because maybe she's running this time because something inside her, something dim but growing, doesn't want to run. As the week progresses, Mrs. Smith's frustration intensifies because, as she says, she had prepared herself for the worst things (sexual) and yet, Sellers' Hoffman does not do any of them. She lives in anticipation to get it over with mixed with a need to confirm that Hoffman is a base jerk – but that doesn't happen. He has some sweet moments, even though he's a misogynist in the way a single middle-aged man often is, and his insights into the darker nature of women ring correct (but he knows that they're not the whole truth and by trying to make them the whole truth, he's a bigger hypocrite than the female race he's condemning). This all plays out in a series of scenes so well acted by the principals that it should be taught in acting school to show young actors the beauty of subtlety on the big screen. Cusack is pitch perfect as Mrs. Smith and Sellers was never better than he was playing Hoffman – and this is high praise because Sellers wasn't just a gifted comedic actor – he was one of the best actors of his generation. Like all actors, he was a gun for hire, and he loved the limelight, and this lead to some bad choices. But who else could be Dr. Strangelove, Inspector Clouseau, and Chance Gardener? There's a moment near the end when Mrs. Smith calls him ugly, and the pain of her condemnation flashes over Sellers' whole body, he makes us understand all the sadness of this character in one brief, non-flashy, reaction shot. It's heartbreaking. It should be noted the direction here is excellent – it could have felt like a filmed play, but to me, it didn't. Sex Degrees of Separation and Closer – two films I enjoyed, feel like filmed plays to me. Hoffman, even though it uses one locale (Hoffman's apartment) as its primary set, always felt like a movie in and of itself while I was watching it. My only quibble is the ending. It needed to be darker. And in a movie like this, so predicated on characters and their fates, that would usually kill the experience for me. But it didn't. Because I wished these characters would find some happiness, so I went along with the fantasy, even though I knew the relationship as defined by the rest of the movie could never work. If you like Sellers, buy this one. If you like quality character driven dramas, buy this one. It's an unjustly forgotten gem.

My favorite Peter Sellers movie. It is light but intense, breezy but penetrating, romantic yet disturbing. I wish it was out on video, I haven't seen it in years. Great dialogue that makes you giggle, like the line above in my One Line Summary.