Hoffman

"Dr. Strangelove" is a fine movie, but I'd rather lose Peter Sellers's three legendary performances there than the first few seconds of his title role in "Hoffman", where he simply opens a door and stares at a young woman with succulent, lich-like longing.

The rest of "Hoffman" is nearly as good, so much so it's a surprise it hasn't been picked up for cult-movie status like some other lesser Sellers films have. Part of the problem, of course, is that "Hoffman" is a kind of transgressive pleasure.

Sellers plays Benjamin Hoffman, a middle-management guy who develops an office crush on the pretty-but-engaged Janet Smith (Sinéad Cusack). When Hoffman finds out Janet's fiancé has been stealing from their common employer, Hoffman invites Janet to his London pad for a weeklong stay that involves philosophy, creepy stares, pajama-clad standoffs, and the threat of sex if not the actual thing itself.

"Hope never dies in a man with a good dirty mind," Hoffman declares.

Director Alvin Rakoff and his team play up the spookiness of the assignation. They shoot Sellers like Christopher Lee in a Hammer Dracula film, his red-rimmed eyes staring blankly at Cusack. One scene of him inside an elevator in pursuit of her reminds me of Dracula awaiting sunset inside his coffin. He also sucks snails and rubs liniment on her bare neck, furthering the connection.

Not an easy comedy for pure laughs, "Hoffman" delivers humor more in the form of perverted menace, especially when Janet is reacting to his more over-the-top pronouncements. "Please make yourself look as though you want to be fertilized" is almost the first thing out of his mouth when Janet arrives, and the conversation goes downhill from there.

What makes "Hoffman" more affecting is the realness of Sellers' performance, the sense of watching a real person for once behind the mask Sellers so effortlessly employed. Benjamin Hoffman is a vampire or sorts, but one with a heart, who views his victim with compassion and sees his situation as a possible victory for "men who missed the boat but still need love".

The script by Ernest Gébler offers up many odd lines which rub some the wrong way and no doubt contribute to "Hoffman's" low reputation. A New York Times critic once inveighed against Hoffman's comment: "It's not only homosexuals who don't like women. Hardly anybody likes them." Of course, that's Hoffman's line, a guy who tells a woman he loves that women are just fallopian tubes with teeth. The fact he is so lost is part of the movie's comedy and part of its tragedy at the same time. Frankly, I also find the line hilarious.

There are groaner lines in "Hoffman", though, like when Hoffman tells Janet: "Why don't you stop stabbing me in the face with your doomed youth!" Huh? Give Cusack credit for providing such a resonant backstop to Seller's left-field banter, and giving her character the right amount of innocence and sex to make the whole thing work. Too much of one or the other, and it would fly off the rails.

"Hoffman" is probably not for everyone. It moves slowly, spends a lot of time with just two people in frame, and plays its comedy close to the vest. But for those who give it a chance, and especially those who adore Sellers going in, "Hoffman" is like a valentine wrapped inside a hand grenade just waiting to surprise you with a seriously fulfilling rumination on the riddle of love.

There is nothing bad i can say about Hoffman. It is very unusual and it might take some getting used to before you learn to love it. The first time i watched Hoffman, i didn't know if i liked it or not, but it stayed on my mind and i felt a desire to watch it again. After viewing it a second time i found it to be much better, perhaps because i knew what to expect so i could reflect more on the good points. Now i have seen Hoffman about ten times or more, and i still enjoy it more every time i watch it. Peter Sellers performance as Benjamin Hoffman is simply amazing and held my interest all the way through. Sinead Cusack's performance as Janet Smith was just as good, i think she was perfect for the part of a woman who finds Benjamin Hoffman to be a repulsive creepy and offensive man. Sinead's facial expressions completely cracked me up and her constant whining throughout the movie is just hilarious. Hoffman focuses entirely on the relationship between Benjamin and Janet for the entire movie, Benjamin blackmails Janet to stay with him in his apartment for two weeks where he would treat her with respect, that's the storyline, they work at the same place but have never talked, Benjamin just admires her beauty from afar knowing that a woman like her would never be interested in a man like him, especially with his maniac face as he puts it, there are no other characters except for at the beginning and end. The movie starts with Janet saying goodbye to her fiancee at the train station where he believes she is going to visit her grandmother for two weeks, however this is just a plan so her fiancee won't know she is really staying in the apartment of another man. She makes her way to Benjamin's apartment and is so uptight for the first part of the movie, refusing to take off her hat and coat, it's so nice to see her loosen up slowly as the movie progresses, to become more comfortable with Benjamin and talk to him, but whenever she starts to like him, Benjamin will say something crazy to ruin things between them. Two words i can think of to describe Hoffman are ABSORBING and HEARTWARMING, a black romantic comedy which can make you laugh, smile and cry (it's quite moving in a good way). These type of movies are very predictable, therefore you can guess what is going to happen at the end but Hoffman delivers laughs, clever lines, romance, brilliant acting and lots of nice piano music which was very suitable for the movie. Hoffman to me is an undiscovered masterpiece, it's worth every penny you would pay for the DVD which is available in the UK.

This is at once one of Peter Sellers' least-known and more interesting vehicles; the film is virtually a two-hander – with Sinead Cusack (daughter of actor Cyril and later Mrs. Jeremy Irons) as the young girl blackmailed by a middle-aged colleague (Sellers) into becoming his lover, because he knows of her boyfriend's involvement in a robbery.

While the film is considered a comedy, it doesn't sound like it from that synopsis; it's really a character-driven piece on a serious theme – mid-life crisis – which has been treated several times over the years, though rarely in such perceptively intimate detail (for which it was deemed tasteless at the time). The humorous element (if one can call it that) springs from the fact that Sellers' character – who had been fantasizing about Cusack for months – doesn't have the courage to do anything with her once they're together! Incidentally, Hoffman's innately cruel nature was so similar to the real Peter Sellers that one might be inclined to think that his dialogue was improvised – but this wasn't the case!

With this in mind, the film can be seen as talky (though Ernest Gebler's script, adapted from his own novel, does contain a smattering of good lines), low-key and claustrophobic (the narrative strays only occasionally from Sellers' flat, and the two almost never interact with other people) – not to mention repetitive and overstretched at 113 minutes! One particular sequence included an ambitious shot lasting for some 18 minutes, which certainly belied the rumors that Sellers had suffered brain damage during that infamous incident from the early 1960s in which he suffered no less than seven heart attacks in one day. The film's happy-ending-of-sorts, then, is highly improbable – but I guess it works well enough in this context (given that Cusack's boyfriend is depicted as a one-dimensional character and, therefore, no match for the intellectual Sellers).

Gerry Turpin's cinematography of the bleak London settings is one of the film's main assets, while the tone of romantic melancholy – inherent in Ron Grainer's score and his Don Black-penned theme song, "If There Ever Is A Next Time" (sung by Matt Monro) – infuses the whole film and even serves as exposition for the main narrative during its deliberately vague early stages. By the way, director Rakoff had already handled the same material as a TV production starring Donald Pleasance; at his own admission, the film version was too slow – because the pace seemed to be dictated by the lead actor – and professed to having misgivings also about the choice of music. As for Sellers himself, he was so disappointed with the final result that the star offered to buy back the negative from the producer and shoot it again from scratch (the film, in fact, was such a resounding flop that it wasn't shown in New York until 1982)!

This happens to be one of the most underrated films of Peter Sellers' career. For some reason the critics and book writers have (in their majority) faced the film as a comedy (have they seen the film?), when it is clear it is a drama with just little sparkles of comedy...Peter Sellers and Sinead Cusack are wonderful in their roles and I have to admit I have seen the film more than 10 times in my life (I never have enough!). For the critisism the film faced, one can say that generally Peter Sellers was in the target of certain columnists who never fail to badmouth the successful and the famous (a bad comment always sells more). So, the film (and others of this era of Sellers' career)was an easy target to hit the star and not judge the film for its essence... The film also features wonderful music and it's a pity the soundtrack was never released...

If you are a fan of Peter Sellers, and you have not seen this film, then make sure you do so immediately. It is an absolute gem of a movie, with an emotional core rare in film. Barely seen or heard of, it has only been broadcast the once, during a Channel 4 season of Sellers' films in the late nineties, and even then at about two in the morning, which is a scandal. Sellers gives the most interesting performance of his career without his trademark silly voice or make-up and is all the better for it, playing Hoffman as a lonely, shadowy figure, yearning somewhat pathetically for Sinead Cusack's Miss Smith. Part of the film's success is possibly due to the fact that the two main characters spend almost the entire film alone, thus enabling them to build the relationship nicely, changing from seeming lechery on Hoffman's part and terror on Miss Smith's to an emotional bond between them. It keeps you guessing about their relationship right to the end, and Seller's displays real emotional power in the later scenes. A wonderfully melancholic film about unrequited love and a man's fear of time passing as well as a kind of variation on Beauty and the Beast. Highly recommended, with a superb score too. Don't miss it.