The Red Shoes is evidently the most beautiful example of blending two arts: cinema and ballet. It is a visual feast and a landmark in cinema history without a doubt. But personally, I find the ending needlessly forced. Still I love it, and cherish it. Anton Walbrook and Moria Shearer's performances are exceptionally glorius and just splendid.
Once a great poet said "What is Love? Baby don't hurt me, no more" The answer is, as magnificent Boris Lermontov character put it: "Adolescent non-sense" (compared to art). Compared to the magic of 15 minutes Red Shoes Ballet scene, love is nothing. It is just a selfish hormonal activity lasts a year or two. Love is temporary, but art, the real art is eternal. And how many million times we have to watch movies revering and celebrating love (or family)? Why can't we have once in a while a movie revering and celebrating art? This movie was meant to be the one for me, but it failed short with a forced ending.
Hans Christian Andersen's short fairy tale The Red Shoes is actually a suprisingly sick, twisted, puritan garbage. In it, a girl named Karen is obsessed with a pair of red shoes. When she gets them, she is doomed because the red shoes represent her (sexual and/or materialistic) desires. No, it does not end with the shoes forcing her to dance until she dies, as many of us heard. What really happens is, she begs an executioner to chop his feet off! So does he. Then she gets some wooden feet and a cane to walk and tries to move on with life, but the bloody shoes show up dancing in front of her Church. Only when Karen regrets and repents her sins, then the bewitched shoes go away. She finds her repentant and relieved self in her Church again, living happily, piously ever after, without feet, without desires but fear. Her religious faith is restored. You can listen to the whole short tale read by Liam Neeson in Criterion DVD/Blu-Ray.
The Red Shoes fairy tale is rightly altered from its original by almost everyone. Same was done in this movie. The famous ballet sequence has little to do with the original fairy tale, other than the function of the red shoes. Same thing had to be done with the ending of the movie.
Why the hell, Vicky -the woman- have to choose between her carrier and her love? Why is she so powerless and just takes her own life. It is such a disappointment that a perfect film ends like that. It does not have to be a tragedy like the crooked fairy tale. Instead, Vicky should have chosen her art, her performance, her blood and tears, and she could have just meet half way with his selfish husband. Then it would totally be a reverence and celebration of art, not just in shape and style, but in its core message.
Once a great poet said "What is Love? Baby don't hurt me, no more" The answer is, as magnificent Boris Lermontov character put it: "Adolescent non-sense" (compared to art). Compared to the magic of 15 minutes Red Shoes Ballet scene, love is nothing. It is just a selfish hormonal activity lasts a year or two. Love is temporary, but art, the real art is eternal. And how many million times we have to watch movies revering and celebrating love (or family)? Why can't we have once in a while a movie revering and celebrating art? This movie was meant to be the one for me, but it failed short with a forced ending.
Hans Christian Andersen's short fairy tale The Red Shoes is actually a suprisingly sick, twisted, puritan garbage. In it, a girl named Karen is obsessed with a pair of red shoes. When she gets them, she is doomed because the red shoes represent her (sexual and/or materialistic) desires. No, it does not end with the shoes forcing her to dance until she dies, as many of us heard. What really happens is, she begs an executioner to chop his feet off! So does he. Then she gets some wooden feet and a cane to walk and tries to move on with life, but the bloody shoes show up dancing in front of her Church. Only when Karen regrets and repents her sins, then the bewitched shoes go away. She finds her repentant and relieved self in her Church again, living happily, piously ever after, without feet, without desires but fear. Her religious faith is restored. You can listen to the whole short tale read by Liam Neeson in Criterion DVD/Blu-Ray.
The Red Shoes fairy tale is rightly altered from its original by almost everyone. Same was done in this movie. The famous ballet sequence has little to do with the original fairy tale, other than the function of the red shoes. Same thing had to be done with the ending of the movie.
Why the hell, Vicky -the woman- have to choose between her carrier and her love? Why is she so powerless and just takes her own life. It is such a disappointment that a perfect film ends like that. It does not have to be a tragedy like the crooked fairy tale. Instead, Vicky should have chosen her art, her performance, her blood and tears, and she could have just meet half way with his selfish husband. Then it would totally be a reverence and celebration of art, not just in shape and style, but in its core message.
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