Die Hölle Rache Kocht in meinem Herzen

I have despised Kenneth Branagh ever since his meretricious, smugly dishonest and reactionary Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, whose sole virtue - Robert De Niro's intelligent and articulate monster - is quickly outweighed by Branagh's scenery-chewing performance and by a climax which takes the form of a partial and inept remake of The Bride of Frankenstein, James Whale's charm and humour having first been excised with something nearly as large and blunt as Branagh's head. Hence, now that dear Kenneth has received his second critical mauling in as many weeks, the cockles of my little black heart are glowing nicely. Last week it was his butchery of Sleuth, in which he and Harold Pinter tried to improve on Joseph Mankiewicz and Anthony Shaffer; this time it's his trampling of The Magic Flute, in which he and Stephen Fry do their bit to make Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart a bit more, you know, relevant. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw finds it clear, energetic, generous and uncynical; but then, Bradshaw gave an equal number of stars (five out of five) to Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers and Peter Jackson's King Kong. The Observer's Philip French, the Times and the Torygraph all give The Magic Flute a pasting; and, by the look of things, rightly too.

Aside from the peculiar decision to set the film in the trenches of Flanders (what, in Osiris' name, was he thinking?), Branagh has also committed the gaffe of having the libretto translated into English - apparently, in his role as purveyor-in-chief of cultchah-for-the-proles, he decided that subtitles were beyond us. Whatever the excuse, translated libretti are generally a very bad idea - even Powell and Pressburger, who are to Kenneth Branagh the director what Laurence Olivier is to Kenneth Branagh the actor, only just get away with it in their charming but uneven Tales of Hoffmann. Bergman had The Magic Flute translated into Swedish for his own film adaptation, with results I am unable to judge; but in general, since the music has been composed to the rhythms and intonations of a different language, a translated libretto must be either bad verse or worse translation. Subtitles, which need only convey meaning without the necessity of matching rhyme or metre, are a far more sensible solution. Then again, perhaps the idea of making his version a partial remake of Oh What A Lovely War tied Branagh's hands - a Tamino fighting in the trenches might be, you know, relevant (think Iraq, lovie, think Afghanistan); but a Tamino who is fighting for the Boche? Even if dear Kenneth had not begun his misbegotten career by squalling and bludgeoning his way through another lot of despised foreigners in Henry V, it seems doubtful such a thing could have been countenanced.

Anthony Quinn, in the Independent, criticises The Magic Flute on the bizarre grounds that "opera should be seen in the opera house: enclosing it within a film screen and obliging your cast to lip-synch along to their parts does neither art form any favours"; by which logic no-one should ever adapt a book, a play or a stage musical to film. After all, enclosing a novel within a film screen and obliging your cast to mouth edited gobs of the dialogue - surely that does neither art form any favours? But good opera films, which satisfy both musically and cinematically, have been made before. The aforementioned Tales of Hoffmann is one; Hans Jürgen Syberberg's astounding Parsifal, in which many of the cast did indeed lip-synch along, is another. But neither of those was directed by Kenneth Branagh.