O Amor de um Homem

Because there are only two characters in the whole movie we are given a wonderful taste of what the actors can do. Sellers tumultuous life and rare abilities shine through every scene. A must for any fan of Lolita or Being There.

"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.

Ask people what they remember about Peter Sellers, and if they know him at all they'll talk about the Pink Panther films or The Goon Show. In other words, he's forever labelled as a comic actor. In "Hoffman", Sellers plays against type in a straight dramatic performance - and, to be blunt, he's brilliant. "Hoffman" was ignored at the box office upon its' release in 1970, and never got a proper US release. Even today, with a million films on VHS and DVD, you'll have a hard job finding a copy. Audiences were clearly not prepared to sit through a film in which Peter Sellers didn't play four characters, fly through the air and crash painfully, or mask himself in make-up or funny voices. That "Hoffman" is essentially a filmed stage play with only four characters, and is largely just Sellers and Sinead Cusack talking for two hours, also clearly worked against its' success.

This is unfortunate, as here we have what is arguably Sellers' best performance. Sellers essentially plays himself...pale, somewhat gaunt, well-spoken, with an undeniable air of restrained madness about him. Sellers' Benjamin Hoffman is a hollow man, a man who has no existence outside of the things he remembers - and the unattainable image of the woman he adores from afar. Fate plays into Hoffman's hands when he obtains blackmail material on the woman's fiance...his price for his silence: a week alone with her in his flat. Sinead Cusack plays this prisoner of Hoffman's desire brilliantly, alternating between fiery Celtic indignation and a childlike quality. Though she can leave Hoffman's clutches at any time, she can never bring herself to do so...firstly out of fear for her future husband, and later because she finds herself captivated by the strangeness of her urbane blackmailer. Sellers is the very picture of quiet madness in this movie, never raising his voice and never displaying any hint of the obsessions that drive him in an overt manner. Hoffman is not a rapist, nor a maniac, but rather a emotional vampire who draws life from the innocence and youth of his 'guest'. Hoffman takes her to dinner, for walks in the park, to a department store, (in one notable scene, Cusack is pictured standing beneath sides of beef - a metaphor almost too unsubtle to work properly. But it does), he treats her with the utmost respect, he never so much as kisses her. In short, he tries to make her love him even though his every utterance and opinion arouse little but hatred in her. Hoffman is clearly goading her with his studied misogyny and his overbearing attempts to make her feel 'at home', fearing that if he ever became a person to her, or she to him, the spell he has cast would crack. And dreams are all Hoffman has, all he knows. Sellers' wraithlike appearance reinforces the vampiric quality of Hoffman...a man who has had all joy and wonder sucked out of his life by crushing domesticity. The Dracula metaphor is explored further in Hoffman's comments about wanting to consume his captive, and in a scene where she bares his neck to him. In short, "Hoffman" is a neglected gem, one of the few movies in which Sellers could escape his clownish characters and simply be Peter Sellers, actor. Or perhaps, Hoffman IS Sellers...? Jeremy Bulloch, best known as Boba Fett in the Star Wars series, plays the little-seen fiance. Also of note is the rather excellent score, composed by Ron Grainer. Grainer, of course, gave the world the best TV theme tune of all time..."Doctor Who". Matt Munro, who sang the title tune to From Russia With Love, does the honours here also with the melancholy song 'If There Ever Is A Next Time'. No Sellers fan should miss this movie. A masterpiece.

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)!

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.