The Red Shoes (1948)

The Red Shoes
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Written by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger from a story by Hans Christian Andersen
1948/UK
The Archers/Independent Producers
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#222 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Boris Lermontov: Why do you want to dance?

[Vicky thinks for a short while] Victoria Page: Why do you want to live?[/box]

This movie is very beautiful but very sad.

Boris Lermantov (Anton Walbrook) runs a leading ballet company in London.  It is his life. Dancing is Victoria Page’s life.  She has already danced principal parts elsewhere in the city.  They meet courtesy of Victoria’s wealthy aunt and he brings her in as a kind of lady-in-waiting to the corps de ballet.  At around the same time, he meets a young composer named Julian Coster (Marius Goering) when he comes in to complain that his music teacher lifted material from Coster’s own work for his ballet score.  Lermantov is an astute judge of talent and hires him as an orchestra coach.

When Lermantov finally sees Vicky dance he is enchanted.  She is selected to go to Paris with the troupe.  Then Lermanov’s  prima ballerina decides to get married.  Lermantov does not believe that women can concentrate on more than one thing at once and fires her.  When the troupe arrives in Monte Carlo, Lermantov is inspired to build a brand new ballet, “The Red Shoes”, around Vicky.  He engages Julian to write the score.  Because Lermantov apparently does not understand people too well, he decides the best thing for Vicky would be to have every meal in Lermantov’s office while Julian plays the score for her.

The ballet is a great triumph and Vicky is a rising star.  Predictably, during all that dining, Julian and Vicky have fallen in love.  For Lermantov, this is a major betrayal.  He fires Julian.  Vicky refuses to stay without Julian, so she is let go as well.  The two young people marry.  None of this changes the fact that Vicky was born to dance.  While Julian is preparing his latest composition for performance in London, Lermantov seduces Vicky back into is grip with an offer to dance “The Red Shoes”, which had been retired from the repertoire upon her departure.

Julian ditches the premiere of his concert to beg Vicky to come back to him on the night of her first performance of the ballet.  The two selfish men in her life decide to force her decide between her career as a dancer and her future as a woman.  This results in tragedy for everyone, particularly Vicky.

This movie is absolutely exquisite in every respect, particularly during the ballet sequences. The color cinematography may never have been surpassed and the art direction is endless in its invention.  It also explores the process of creation in a really profound way.  The film is a jewel and should be seen by every film lover and every fan of the performing arts.

Somebody on the commentary says that Michael Powell saw the moral of the story as “Art is worth dying for.” While that may or may not be the case, I find this troublesome in the context of the story of The Red Shoes.  It just seems unbearably tragic and unfair that a woman should be limited to either her art or her love life.  Surely a man was never expected to make that trade-off.  I hope those days are gone for good.

The Red Shoes won Academy Awards in the categories of Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.  It was nominated in the categories of Best Picture; Best Writing, Motion Picture Story (Pressburger); and Best Film Editing.

Trailer