The Red Shoes (1948) User Reviews

Striving to be the best

[bkoganbing · 9/10 · 22 September 2015]

I guess the lesson to be learned is that when one is in the arts and striving to be the best it demands 100% of you. At least that's the lesson I took away from The Red Shoes. The film itself is a reworking of the plot from Maytime with dance instead of singing as the art form.

Moira Shearer plays aspiring ballerina Victoria Page and her talent is immediately recognized by ballet impresario Anton Walbrook. He takes her under his wing, but Walbrook seems to want to control every aspect of her life. Walbrook also gives a break to young composer Marius Goring whom he hires to help orchestrate the music that the dancer's use. Goring is talented but also quite full of himself as well. Soon enough Shearer and Goring fall in love and that does not fit into the long range plans Walbrook has.

The title comes from a story by Hans Christian Andersen about a ballerina who sees a pair of red ballet slippers and puts them on and she can dance better than anyone has before. But The Red Shoes have their own enchantment, you can't stop dancing once they're on. The ballerina arranges for her feet to be cut off to stop dancing.

The ballet is an allegory for the terrible price one of these three has to pay for art's sake. The ballet itself which we see in its entirety is maybe the best ballet sequence ever brought to the big screen. Pieces of other classic ballet numbers are also scattered throughout the film and are woven and completely integrated into the plot.

Though John Barrymore who was the manager and husband of Jeanette Macdonald in Maytime was no longer available, Anton Walbrook got his career role out of playing Boris Lermontov who constantly walks back and forth over the line between dedication and obsession. Marius Goring is far from Nelson Eddy in this, he's ambitious and wants it all wife and career. To the extent that Shearer is also in the arts, he wants her in no small part to support his ambitions. In fact he becomes as unlikeable as Walbrook. Torn between these two men it is no wonder Shearer meets the fate she does.

Wonderful ballet sequences splendidly photographed by Jack Cardiff and well tuned acting performances by the three leads are the hallmark of The Red Shoes. This one is a timeless classic.

Of Its Time...

[eskimosound · 9/10 · 28 June 2021]

Like the Wizard of Oz and massive Epics like Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments, this movie is of its time. Lavish sets, early colour techniques, formal language and formulaic scripts. This classic has been remastered by Martin Scorsese as it's his favourite movie. It's effectively a Ballet with some behind the scenes begining and end. Nice enough.

Beautiful disturbing vivid cautionary nightmare

[abeachedwhale · 9/10 · 30 June 2021]

When viewing the Criterion Collections' remastered version of this movie, you feel as though you're watching a movie made in the modern day trying to replicate a bygone time. It has an eerie feeling, very nightmarish, but the kind of enjoyable nightmare that you don't want to wake up from. The way the characters face the world that they're in feels authentic to reality, while at the same time, making you comfortably nervous. The story, after consuming it in its entirety, humbles you to realize your dreams and wishes and hopes are not reality. Powell and Pressburger are waaaay ahead of their time and this movie is the prime example. Crushingly enlightening.

A Duel for Art: a Hero *for* our Time

[DrMMGilchrist · 10/10 · 24 January 2004]

Art as vocation; art as religion; art as the purpose of life: The Archers team of Powell and Pressburger aimed high with 'The Red Shoes' - and scored a bull's-eye. The film is a feast for the senses: cinematography (by Archers regular Jack Cardiff), music, acting and ballet are combined to make a magnificent whole. Emeric Pressburger's story appears simple at first glance, but is a challenging study of the value and purpose of art, and of aestheticism as a creed (a term not used lightly). It is given life by some of the most talented dancers of the era: Leonid Myasin/Massine as lovable Grisha; Ludmilla Tchérina as glamorous, flighty Irina; Robert Helpmann - who choreographed the title ballet - as Ivan; Marie Rambert as herself, and Moira Shearer (Ashton's 'Cinderella') highly appealing as the heroine Vicky. The non-dancing cast is led by Archers regulars Anton Walbrook (magnificent - why no Oscar?) and Marius Goring (so convincing I ended up wanting to slap him).

The plot combines Andersen's fable, 'The Red Shoes' with elements of Dyagilev's relationships with Nizhinskii and Myasin, and the effect of the younger men's marriages. Dancer Vicky Page (Shearer) and composer Julian Craster (Goring) are taken up and encouraged by ballet impresario Boris Lermontov (Walbrook).

Boris is the film's dominant character, an obvious portrait of Sergei Pavlovich Dyagilev (1872-1929), one of 20C culture's greatest figures, the driving force of 'Mir Iskusstva' and the 'Ballets Russes'. However, his Scots-Russian surname alludes to Mikhail Yur'evich Lermontov (1814-41), poet and author of 'A Hero of Our Time', Pushkin's successor as the voice of Russian Romanticism. Boris is an aesthete and perfectionist, a true believer in the religion of art. All his passions and energies are channelled into bringing out the best in the company that is his 'family'. He demands equal dedication from his protégés. He believes that if you have an outstanding talent, your primary duty is to give that talent its fullest expression, not fritter it away through mundane distractions and dalliances. Human relationships are transitory: what matters is the art. It is a stern, unsentimental creed, but a noble one.

Vicky and Julian begin an affair during the creation of the new ballet, 'The Red Shoes' (which we see in full, and has, in its sacrificial death-by-dancing, echoes of Stravinskii's 'Sacre du Printemps', choreographed by Nizhinskii for Dyagilev). Their love tests their commitment to Lermontov's ethic. What makes the conflict interesting and effective is that it is not trivialised as sexual rivalry: Boris is discreetly signalled as gay, like Dyagilev - something reinforced by the casting of Walbrook. (It is unnecessary to highlight the courage, in 1948, of placing centre-stage a dignified, powerful, non-caricatured gay character, played by a gay actor who had escaped Nazi persecution.) The struggle is between real Romanticism - hence Boris's sharing his name with the Byronic poet - and mere 'romance'. But the brutal climax, bringing together Andersen's story with suitably Russian overtones of 'Anna Karenina', is an evasion of decision: a character choosing death rather than commitment one way or the other. The final scene combines tragic lyricism with awareness of the unnecessary waste: and the dance, of course, goes on.

My understanding of and relationship with 'The Red Shoes' has changed and deepened with time. In girlhood, I was inclined to be relatively indulgent to Vicky and Julian. In middle age, they seem plain self-indulgent. Julian, frankly, isn't worth any sacrifice. Ballet is a "second-rate form of expression", he says in a quarrel with Boris - who, of course, launched his career. (If Boris had punched *him* instead of the mirror, how I'd have cheered!) He regards Vicky as a muse for his own fulfilment as a composer, while she frets with frustration, her pointe shoes in a drawer, her own artistic fulfilment denied. Their separate beds after marriage seem a revealing insight, not merely '40s film censorship. On the spectrum of fictional obnoxiousness, Julian's not far behind Angel Clare in 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles'. Boris's manipulations are actually *less* selfish - directed towards enabling Vicky to express *her* creativity to the maximum - not bury her talent in a drawer.

Yes - Boris's passionately held vocation and values now evoke my strongest sympathies and recognition/identification as a fellow 'true believer' in art (and long-time Dyagilev-ite). Young sentimentalists may hate him (he knows "adolescent nonsense" when he hears it!), but he speaks hard truths and much wisdom. Personal relationships are fragile; a dancer's active career can be short. If you have a gift, service to it must come first: it is a sacred duty. Domesticity can wait. Yes, he is autocratic, temperamental: prophets and visionaries usually are. And what is his job? To unite other exceptionally gifted people from diverse disciplines - painting, costume, music, dance - with *their* competing egos and artistic temperaments, to create the multifaceted art of ballet. Herding cats is easier! And yet he is capable of generosity and forgiveness, as with the prodigal Irina. A complex, moving, genuinely heroic figure, 'The Red Shoes' is more his film than Vicky and Julian's.

But what went wrong with British film? The Archers made 'The Red Shoes' in 1948; now we have vacuous romantic-comedy/chick-flick pap or drab kitchen-sinkers that might as well be TV soap episodes, betokening a loss of cultural and intellectual confidence. (In visual flair, has The Archers' torch passed to Baz Luhrmann? Time will tell!) The present cultural climate treats the arts as an optional add-on to civilisation, rather than a defining part of what it means to be civilised. The arts are constantly called upon to justify their existence in commercial or social engineering terms, not for their intrinsic worth. A film, then, in which the most compelling character advocates Art for Art's Sake - art as a sacred calling - flings a gauntlet in the face of a market-driven, anti-intellectual, anti-beauty, utilitarian society. Sergei Pavlovich/Boris Lermontov, where are you now we need you?!!!

A superb production, wonderful colour, but above all, superbly directed.

[Ben_Cheshire · 10/10 · 1 April 2004]

The performances are terrific (with only the odd unusual line delivery, partly due to english being many of the actors' second language, and partly due to the fact that all of the main dancing characters, are not professional actors at all, but dancers - including Moira Shearer, Australia's Robert Helpmann, Leonida Massine and Ludmilla Tcherina - which fact considering, they do marvellous jobs).

The story's passion for ballet and music comes across to the audience, and the story is compelling and fascinating, due to the way it is told. Moira Shearer, in a career-defining role, has a wonderful presence as the young dancer Victoria Page, who becomes a star of the Lermontov Ballet Company, and dances the lead in the ballet The Red Shoes. But Anton Walbrook is truly terrific as Lemontov. One particular moment i was very impressed with was when he begins to write a letter to Victoria, and there is a closeup of his face, and on his face we can read the emotions of his letter in a very subtle way. A marvellous scene. He has a germanic cold stare in this part which really brings it to life - the character of Lemontov is entirely in his eyes.

The score is fantastic, particularly the original ballet of the red shoes itself, composed for the film by Brian Easdale. The film has such a wonderful look partly due to the fact that its production designer was a painter, Hein Heckroth.

But the element which really makes this movie great is how superbly it is directed. With glorious use of colour, it is directed in a smooth, impeccable style in the manner of Renoir - except here each frame poses not as a painting, but as a moment from a ballet.

A wonderful film to watch.

One of the best films of all time

[halloweenbikini · 10/10 · 23 April 2004]

I am biased because I have loved this film ever since I was four years old. Some films, as you grow and age, lose their magic and you forget what made you love it as a child. This film has only strengthened my love and appreciation of it as I have grown older. I am not one to narrate a storyline, as this film is great for more than, and even despite, it's story.

The beautiful colour photography of the locations, including London, Paris and Monte Carlo, will take you back to a fictional glamorous 1940's where everyone wore chic clothes and were perfectly mannered and groomed and make you wish you could visit there sometime.

The music is a highlight for me. Brian Easdale has written such a detailed and nuanced lyrical score that does not overpower any moment in the film. There are moments where the music so perfectly conveys a character's very thought, even though they are not saying a word and their face betrays not a hint of emotion.

The story is a familiar one, particularly today, of ambition and the balance between career and personal life, between a creative passion and a human one. And of course, yes there is the ballet element. I have no interest in ballet and I love the film. It does play up the prima ballerinas and haughty choreographer stereotypes, but as they are played by real ballet dancers, I think it makes it all the funnier. Robert Helpmann and Leonide Massine are particularly hilarious and over the top, so full of pathos and themselves.

Anton Walbrook is the star of this film, playing a Diaghilev type character and absolutely dominates any scene he is in. He is not bombastic in a showy, hammy way. It is a more silent but deadly charismatic performance. It is a pity he did not receive an award for it. He is stern, uncompromising, cold and passionate and absolutely deadly. He is a gentleman tough guy.

Moira Shearer and Marius Goring, unfortunately do not fare so well in comparison, but they are perfectly adequate in their roles and have some touching and funny moments. It is not altogether their fault, the characters are a little bland, especially in comparison to all the other larger than life characters they are paired with. Shearer really comes good as soon as she starts dancing.

Which brings me to the fifteen minute ballet in the middle of the film. It is beautiful (and brief). The dancing is fabulous, it looks beautiful and the music is amazing. No one should fast forward this masterpiece of filmed ballet. It is cinematic, not (as filmed ballet usually is) procenium stage bound. It is a modern ballet, choreographed by Robert Helpmann and Leonide Massine and is a story, perhaps even a mirror, within and of the film.

The Red Shoes combines every one of it's elements into a perfect whole. Some elements are a bit lacking, the story is very simple and given another context a bit soap opera like, but combined with the visuals, the music, the characters and the human comedy-tragedy, it is a beautiful complete film and one that will keep improving with age.

10/10

P&P's Masterpiece

[Hugh-14 · 10/10 · 12 April 1999]

I have seen this film about 30 times in 30 years and for me this film will always be special. Astonishingly, my wife, who is a Ballet Teacher, doesn't care at all for this film finding it too 'affected'. Perhaps as I am not involved with ballet at a professional level is a reason why I can enjoy this vibrant, colourful fantasy so much, but then our ballet friends adore the film, so who knows why this film affects some so profoundly (Spielberg&Scorsese!!) and not others. Anton Walbrook's authoritative performance is so memorable and Moira Shearer dances beautifully. Perhaps because the film is so highly charged with passion and emotion it will never please everyone, but I feel this is one of the great achievements of British Cinema and a film so rich and inspirational you will never wish to forget it.

(Top 10 pick) A superior film.

[Hermit C-2 · 10/10 · 22 April 1999]

I first heard of "The Red Shoes" when I read the liner notes to an album by the jazz/fusion group Weather Report, called "Tale Spinnin'". Therein it said that saxophonist Wayne Shorter had seen the film a few dozen times. Intrigued, I watched it when I noticed it in the TV listings. What a discovery!

With its focus on the tangle of lives of a ballerina, a composer, and a dictatorial impresario who uses them both, the story may have elements of a soap opera, but it's a superior soap opera. What appealed to Shorter, I'm sure, is the film's depiction of the artists' creative process. It may have been done better elsewhere, but I haven't seen it. Besides that, it's beautifully directed, beautifully photographed and sumptuous to look at throughout. The surreal title ballet is performed in a segment that is stunning, and I'm not just using that word as a cliche.

Anton Walbrook stands out as Lermontov, leader of the ballet troupe. There are many real-life artists from the ballet world in the film, including Leonide Massine and Robert Helpmann. Massine is particularly effective.

Don't be put off by the notion that this is some effete art film; it's high quality AND accessible. Anyone who enjoys art (especially ballet), romance or just plain good moviemaking owes it to themselves to see it.

A true masterpiece

[emuir-1 · 25 April 2004]

A great film speaks to each of us in a different way. To me this more than a colourful piece of escapist entertainment, this was a glimpse into a world of magnificent color, sumptious settings, French Haute Couture, the theatre, music, luxury hotels, elegant opera houses, chaffeured Rolls Royce cars, travel to the South of France - in short, everything that a child in the near bankrupt England in 1948 had never seen and could barely imagine.

I was fascinated not only by the glimpse of an elitist life, but of the time capsule which the film presented of a time and place that no longer exists as it was at that time. The views of London in 1948, are similar to watching "World War II in Color" on the history channel. When the ballet company travelled, they took the train. Rationing may still have existed back then, and travellers could not take money out of the country, except for a ridiculously inadequate amount; therefore, if you went abroad you had to know someone with whom you could stay. I also found myself wondering how they got the money to make a technicolour film in 1947, when they began filming.

Part of the film takes place in Monte Carlo, only 20 years after the heyday of the famous Ballet Russe. In fact the ballet company in the film is quite obviously based on the Diaghilev Company. Former member Leonid Massine has a major part in the film, and Marie Rambert has a cameo role.

This is also a ballet film for those who do not really care for ballet. The plot is simple - rising young ballerina falls in love with rising young composer and must choose between him and a career possessively controlled by the impressario - and acts as a frame for the ballet. The film is as near perfection as it is possible to get, and watching it in 2004, it does not seem to have dated at all. Everyone, especially Anton Walbrook, is perfectly cast. The script is witty and occasionally humorous. The technicolour photography is superb, especially capturing Moira Shearer's flaming red hair.

The audio commentary on the DVD adds immensely to the enjoyment of the film, which is one that can be watched over and over. o understand how great this film really is, try watching Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge" travesty afterwards.

One of the few films impossible to over-praise

[Spleen · 10/10 · 20 December 1999]

The film isn't THAT closely related to Hans Christian Andersen's story; but it would be a good idea to read the story before seeing the film. It's one of Andersen's better stories, anyway.

Another minor note: if no other consideration will sway you, see `The Red Shoes' for a perceptive look the position of the ballet composer relative to that of the dancers. For Powell and Pressburger it's no more than a diverting side issue, but it's one of the things that especially interested me. If you look at advertisements for ballet productions today, you'll notice that the composer's name is NEVER printed - even if the ballet is called `Cinderella' and the public has no way of working out whose score is being used. It puts the composer in his place, no doubt. Yet musicians at the ballet are in the habit of thinking that they're the most important people there.

I'm on their side. I happen to loathe classical ballet as such. `Swan Lake' strikes me as a lovely score disfigured by people who insist on dancing to it. Yet `The Red Shoes' makes me put all of this aside. Indeed, it would be fair to say that I simply CAN'T dislike ballet while watching the film - which is especially odd, considering some of the things it does to people.

So, yes, if `The Red Shoes' can have this effect on ME, of all people, it's surely one of the best films ever made. I can't agree at all with the people who describe the film as `melodrama' or `camp'. (The latter charge I scarcely even understand.) The story is what it is and it's told at the most realistic and sincere level appropriate. The characters who act theatrically (NOT melodramatically) are all creatures of the theatre, and have not spent not just their days but their lives in Lermontov's troupe. If you want a more understated view of things then watch the musicians. To put in a word for one of them, Brian Easdale's source music is superb: GOOD music of a kind that an English composer like Craster might well be expected to write. It's clear that Easdale wrote Craster's compositions first, and then constructed the rest of the score around them, rather than vice versa.

A flawed masterwork

[moonspinner55 · 7/10 · 16 August 2005]

Beautiful to look at, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's "The Red Shoes" is astonishing and ravishing as photographed in color by Jack Cardiff: blood reds, creamy whites, midnight blues and inky ebonies all blend together as if in a dream. A would-be prima ballerina and a would-be music composer both come in contact with a brilliant showman, an impresario who becomes their mentor but soon tries to destroy their love for each other. The "Red Shoes" ballet sequence is, of course, the highlight--and it's interesting to note you do not see it from the audience's point of view, but from within the dancer's imagination. This centerpiece alone puts all other ballet films to shame, and in fact makes some (like Herbert Ross's "The Turning Point") seem downright irrelevant. Problems with the last act may be due to the constraints of (and faithfulness to) the Hans Christian Andersen fable the plot derives from, but the finale is so over-dramatic it may provoke some giggles. The picture manages to capture happily frantic backstage life like no other movie, and is memorable and exciting for many different reasons, but when the final bows come, the story has somewhat molded over. *** from ****

Shall we dance?

[jotix100 · 10/10 · 21 June 2005]

We saw this film years ago. It was a surprise when it was included as part of a Michael Powell's work at the Walter Reade recently. The film still has a great look as it seems it has been lovingly restored. Mr. Powell, working with his usual collaborator, Emeric Pressburger, created a film about the world of ballet that has proved to be, not only a timeless classic, but a crowd pleaser to those who watch it for the first time.

"The Red Shoes" is basically a fairy tale loosely based on a Hans Christian Andersen story. Mr. Anderson and Mr. Pressburger gave it a vivid look that even today, appears fresh and glamorous. Those glorious colors in the film stays in the mind of the viewer forever.

The ballets shown are magnificently staged. The Red Shoes ballet by Sir Robert Helpmann and The Shoemaker by Leonide Massine, a giant in the world of ballet. The music conducted flawlessly by Sir Thomas Beecham lingers in one's mind long after the movie is over. The glorious Technicolor cinematography by Jack Cardiff is amazing.

The acting by Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring and Moira Shearer serves the story well, although the director got better performances in later films, "Peeping Tom" and "Black Narcisus", to name two. Ms. Shearer with her red hair and peaches and cream skin projects such a refined presence in the film that is hard to forget her features. The actress dressed by Jacques Fath, the famous French designer, shows why she was one of the best things that happened to the picture.

"The Red Shoes" is one of the best films about ballet thanks to the vision of its directors.

Beautiful but Boring

[tgooderson · 6/10 · 5 August 2012]

A young amateur ballerina called Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) meets famed ballet producer Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) at a ballet after party, impressing him enough to invite her to join his company. At breakfast the next morning Lermontov also meets an inspiring young composer by the name of Julian Craster (Marius Goring) and he too is invited to join the company. The two talented youngsters begin to work their way up through the company ranks as a romance blossoms between them. There are tough decisions to be made however when it comes to a choice between ambition and love.

I bought The Red Shoes of Blu-Ray about three or four years ago after hearing Martin Scorsese say it was one of his favourite films. Now I've finally seen it I can see why someone would enjoy it on an artistic and technical level but it left me feeling very bored.

The first thing to strike me about the film was its wonderful use of colour. Everything is so bright and vivid and it's incredibly striking. Although Technicolor had been invented in 1916 it wasn't widely used in the film industry until the 1940s. After the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, studios began to think of the medium as the future. The use of colour in The Red Shoes is stunning and is definitely one of the highlights of the film for me. I wondered if the colour was made to be so bright and vivid because the directors were working in a relatively new and unexplored medium, just as today 3D films seem to make an extra effort to have things poking out of the screen at the audience. Unlike 3D which is in my view rarely if ever improves a film, the colour in The Red Shoes most definitely enhances the viewing experience.

The plot revolves around a story within a story with Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tail The Red Shoes being performed inside the film. I was never really interested in the characters and I think this is because the film was very predictable. I was always one step ahead, able to anticipate what was coming next. This was true even of the shocking ending which I worked out just a couple of minutes earlier. This isn't a film with twists or surprises. Even so I thought that the ending was done very well and I loved the thirty seconds on stage after the 'surprise'. I thought it was beautiful and moving. One of the problems I had with the film was my indifference to ballet. I've tried to enjoy it a couple of times when I've been to see ballet and although I have huge admiration for the ability of the dancers I can't help but find it confusing and dull. I'd love to be able to say I can follow a ballet but I just can't. As about a third of the film is purely dancing I often found my mind wandering to other things.

Although I'm no ballet fan I did find the performance of The Red Shoes ballet sometimes interesting. The fairy tail element peaked my interest a little and it felt almost surrealist at times. I was reminded of Disney's Fantasia at various moments. The prolonged dance scene half way through was also very well edited. The costumes' were also well designed and the music, although not to my taste, was excellent. Occasionally the film was overacted, perhaps in part due to the cast been predominantly ballerinas first, actors second. I let this go slightly as a lot of the cast were working in their second or third language. Both leads were very good and Anton Walbrook stood out as the charismatic but vicious impresario. Another thing I liked was to see London's Covent Garden as it was in the 1940s. It's an area I've been though many times and looks very different today. The same is true of Paris and Monte Carlo which are also interesting to see over sixty years ago.

For me The Red Shoes is a lot like ballet itself. It is admirable and I wanted to enjoy it but I often felt bored and kind of couldn't wait for it to be over.

www.attheback.blogspot.com

Wonderful dancing, poor drama

[wolfstar_imdb · 5/10 · 3 January 2018]

The dance scenes are outstanding on every level - direction, production, choreography, talent - I just wish there were more of them. It's to the film's detriment that the framing story that occupies the bulk of its runtime is interminable and wastes Moira Shearer. Simply a filmed version of the ballet would have been far superior, without the dramatically inert framing story tacked on.

Powell and Pressburger's ballet fairytale

[didi-5 · 16 November 2003]

`Why do you want to dance?' Anton Walbrook asks of Moira Shearer part way through Powell and Pressburger's inventive ballet film. `Why do you want to live?' is her cool response. Suggested by the Hans Christian Andersen story and a project long in development by P&P, this sumptuous colour production allows Shearer to display her excellent ballet skills alongside Robert Helpmann and Leonide Massine, and all three are excellent.

In fact, the `Red Shoes Ballet' alone is enough to recommend this movie in the strongest terms. Also in the cast is P&P regular Marius Goring, as the composer pushed aside for the lure of the stage. Walbrook, as the emotionless impresario who is only alive within the confines of his art, is superb, and perhaps only his role as Theo in `Colonel Blimp' served him better.

The Ultimate Dance film!

[TheLittleSongbird · 10/10 · 1 September 2009]

Renowned director Martin Scorsese considers The Red Shoes as his all time favourite movie, and it isn't hard to see why. The Red Shoes I consider to be the ultimate dance film, and is absolutely beautiful in every sense. The cinematography is fabulous, and the choreography is dazzling. The screenplay is excellent, and as the lovers Anton Walbrook and Moira Shearer head the fantastic cast(including Marius Goring) and do an impeccable job at it. The music was just gorgeous, and this is coming from a classical music fan, very lyrical, and just exactly what a ballet score should be like. All in all, if you see the Red Shoes on television, I advise you to watch it, even if you don't like it at first. 10/10 Bethany Cox

You don't do art for a living, you live for art...

[ElMaruecan82 · 10/10 · 23 September 2018]

"Why do you dance?" ballet impresario Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) impassibly asks Vicki Page (Moira Shearer), another of these Covent Garden dreamers who can't fool him.

But Miss Vicky plays in another league, she marks a pause and retorts "why do you want to live?", the man who was so stingy in smiles lets one slip, he's obviously amused by that question, it's a rhetorical one but he answers nonetheless, that's how thrown off he is: "I don't know, but I must" That's her answer too.

And that simple exchange encapsulates what Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's classic masterpiece "The Red Shoes" is about: Passion.

The film is one of the greatest, if not the all-time best movie about ballet, it's all fitting that the title contains the word "shoes", but its soul rests in the word "red" word, red like the fire that ignites three people caught in an odd triangle of love and dedication to art. Some do arts for a living, some live for art, what when these two visions collide? What when there's a choice to make? But I'm being hasty here, let's get back to the genesis ... or how a simple screenplay meant to be a vehicle for a Hollywood star became another bull's-eye from the Archers!

The screenplay is actually both an original and an adapted one, like many self-referential show-within-show movies, it is based on a pre-existing work and make backstage realities and fictional shows converge toward the sameconclusion. One can make an easy comparison with Darren Arronofksy's "Black Swan" and Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" as the emotional skeleton. Working on an existing work is crucial because two original stories can strike as contrived coincidences while a work with an existence of its own allows a better suspension of disbelief.

And it's like Hans Christian Andersen's tale was begging for such a parallel story. The tale is about a woman who puts on some red shoes from a Demonic shoemaker and then can't stop dancing, what starts as an enchanting musical escapade with her boyfriend turns out into a nightmare, the girl dances until she wears nothing but rags and end up so exhausted she got her feet cut to stop the curse... the story is the perfect embodiment of the way passion can drive people to extremes... with a few Faustian undertones.

Powell and Pressburger made a lavish movie about people who are all deeply dedicated to their art and can't allow anything to interfere with it, it's just as if there was a sort of a pact with the devil in a movie that doesn't seem to have any villains. Lermontov is the closest to one but it's more a posture than a nature. Played with dignified severity by Walbrook, he's the kind of man who doesn't let any emotions interfere with work and his only outburst of genuine sympathy happen to be approvals of good work. And when he hires a young pianist as an assistant conductor, it's because he can recognize talent when he sees it.

Julian Craster (Marius Goring) doesn't have the flashiest role of the leading trio but his seemingly lack of physical appeal justifies that he would be the easiest to surrender to love while enhancing Lermontov's frustration that Vicki make a rival out of such a bland man. Lermontov' fortress of confidence is obviously shaken; he could have lost Vicki's heart for Art but not for Julian. We know from that point that tragedy is tiptoeing toward their people's lives. Lermontov himself was based on famous Ballet Russes founder who fired two dancers after they fell in love.

But as riveting as the story is, it doesn't tell one tenth about the film's greatness.

"The Red Shoes" is a dazzling looking film served with Technicolor magnificence, restored with the sheer passion of Martin Scorsese who holds it as one of his favorites, a movie where the hair of Moira Shearer can't inspire any better description than the one written in Powell's memoirs "an autumn bonfire", and where the score and the cinematography render all the grace and magic of the ballet and the tragedy of great art, summed up in that meaningful statement: "a great impression of simplicity can only be achieved by great agony of body and spirit."

While "Black Swan" was an introspection into the agony and spirit of a tormented soul with the same tragic perfection at the end, "Red Shoes" is a more extraverted hymn to the beauty of dance and the way the music can command the most graceful fantasies, and the film couldn't have conveyed that message had it not contaminated the crew, which means the director, art-designers, the camera operators, the writer and the choreographers.

"The Red Shoes" is renowned for a long ballet sequence when we can have a proper view on Moira Shearer's talent as a professional dancer. That Powell wanted a real dancer was the right approach, proving that he respected viewers, art and artists and that a debutante like Shearer or professional dancers such as Leonide Massine or Ludmilla Tchérina could be so natural is one of these miracles allowed by the Gods of the reel when you show them enough respect.

The dancers might have made a pact with the Devil, the Archers made one with Heaven. And as for the ballet in itself, it's a moment of pure heavenly magic that transcends the story and puts us viewers in Vicki's state of mind, it's a surreal combination of stage artifices and camera magic, an extraordinary symbiosis between reality and dreams. It's also a masterstroke of directing featuring many daring special effects we would be wowing over if we weren't so drawn by the music and the art-direction (two deserved Oscar wins for the film).

Truffaut demanded that a film expressed "either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema". That's exactly what "The Red Shoes" are about: joy and agony disguised as sheer virtuosity.

Subtle, tragic, with consummate artistry

[snaunton · 10/10 · 18 June 2001]

Julian Craster (Marius Goring) is a talented young composer, Vicky Page (Moira Shearer) wants only to dance. Both wish to work with the Ballet Lermontov and Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), who lives only for the ballet, is shrewd enough to hire them both. After shaky starts, they achieve first success when Vicky plays the lead in Craster's 'The Red Shoes' at Monte Carlo. But Lermontov demands total commitment to their art, so when Vicky and Craster fall in love, they must leave the company. They marry. Some time later, Vicky returns to Monte Carlo on holiday. Lermontov relents and she is again to star in 'The Red Shoes'. Unexpectedly, her husband turns up to reclaim her, with tragic consequences.

Who but Powell and Pressburger would have the nerve to present an entire ballet, specially written, within a feature film drama? The "Wanna Dance" sequence in "Singin' in the Rain", is, though magnificent, but a bagatelle compared with the "Red Shoes" ballet. The ballet itself is lavishly staged and is a clever cheat, slipping smoothly in and out of the theatre into a world of pure cinema, seeing with the eyes of the audience at one moment, then looking out into an amphitheatre filled with swirling colours. So, too, the more prosaic moments are perfectly rendered, with the wonderful sense of colour and design and costume that is a badge of The Archers. And the dancers! Robert Helpman and Leonide Massine (also the choreographer) dazzle us with their energy and command. And the puppeteer, or rather the Shoemaker to the the Ballet Lermontov, sits in his Monte Carlo office. To Vicky's Sylphide he is the basilisk gargoyle that sits on the parapet outside his window.

Anton Walbrook delivers a masterly performance as the fanatical, tyrannical, director of the Ballet. He can be ice cold, but then, a faint smile will seem filled with warmth. Every nuance of his performance is perfectly timed and delivered. In his final, passionate, pleading that Vicky abandon love and dedicate herself to dance, he glances momentarily at her dresser, indicating that Vicky is ready to put on her shoes. He calculates and he controls them all. But he has miscalculated, and his subsequent address to the theatre audience is delivered with raw chunks of grief, his voice strained, rasping. Marius Goring, too, is completely convincing as the young musician, his every word and action witnessing his commitment to his art. So, too, the collection of Russian emigres around Lermontov give sympathetic and well-modulated performances. Brian Easdale's music supplies all that is needed credibly to support the claims of the film. But, in the end, even amongst such talent, it is the image of Moira Shearer that endures, dancing her heart out in the ballet, then losing it in the shocking closing scenes.

More than the other films, it caught on with audiences, and many of us have fallen madly in love with it and treasured it for life.

[Ziggy5446 · 10/10 · 27 June 2007]

The team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger direct and write one of the great ballet melodramas of all time. Hans Christian Andersen's tragic fairy tale serves as the outline for a film about a backstage love story. The film's core relationship between the impresario and dancer was a take on the one between Diaghilev and Nijinsky. It's the kind of dance film that can appeal to a wide audience not just balletomane devotees.

Originally, Emeric Pressburger's story was commissioned by producer Alexander Korda for his wife-star Merle Oberon (Oscar nominated for "Wuthering Heights" in 1939). One problem was Oberon could not dance. Pressburger then bought the story back and decided to co-direct it with partner Michael Powell with Moira Shearer, a pro dancer who could also act, in the lead. Red-haired Shearer was then a ballerina at Sadler's Wells. In the film, she is joined by such skillful dancers as Léonide Massine, Ludmilla Tchérina, and Robert Helpmann, who also worked on the choreography.

It begins when a talented but impoverished musical composer Julian Craster (Goring) attends a London performance of the Lermontov Ballet Company and recognizes his own score being performed without his authorization. Complaining to ballet impresario Boris Lermontov (Walbrook - who gives the films best performance), things get resolved when the composer is hired to compose the score for his next work -- a ballet version of "The Red Shoes." It's based on Hans Christian Anderson's story about a pair of magical shoes that permit their wearer to magically dance without ever stopping. The impresario also hires a gifted sweet young flaming red-haired dancer, Victoria Page (Moira Shearer, the Sadler's Wells ballerina's debut as an actress), to perform in the ballet.

The centerpiece of the film is a stunning 20 minute ballet sequence, where we see The Red Shoes performed, first on traditional stages, but then on increasingly expressionistic and fanciful sets, until it's clear that the brilliant dance and music have taken the performance away from anything approaching reality, onto a plane of pure art, where such things as the laws of physics and time and space don't seem to apply. It's a heartbreaking and wonderful experience. Leonide Massine, who plays the choreographer and who created the unforgettable character of the Shoemaker within the ballet, is considered to be one of the greatest choreographers in the Western World, creating over 50 ballets. It is he, not Moira Shearer, who makes the ballet sequence so entrancing (and I can't say that I traditionally like ballet). You just can't take your eyes off him. Not bad for someone that his mentor, Sergei Diaghilev, called nothing but a good-looking face and poor legs.

As a result, the ballet is well received and Julian and Victoria fall madly in love. Meanwhile Boris recognizes how talented Victoria is and puts all his energy into making her the perfect dancer and a slave to her art, as The Red Shoes is set to go on tour throughout Europe. Things get dicey when Julian leaves the company and Victoria marries him over the objections of the overbearing and jealous Svengali-like Boris, who believes her art comes before love. Boris uses his power to prevent her from dancing the role that brought her fame. After the music stops the film comes down from its lofty heights to tell its mundane story. The dancer misses performing her magical role and after meeting the impresario by accident after a long time not seeing him agrees to dance for him again just one more time, thus missing her possessive hubby's premiere of his new work. There's a hidden "gayness" to all these melodramatic moves as the three protagonists in the concluding scene in Monaco confront one another and each makes an earnest case for how they stand. It leads to a tragic ending for the dancer who is torn between love and her world of dancing.

The Red Shoes is one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking films one could ever see, certainly one of the best uses of Technicolor cinematography (if not the best) in the history of film. It's one of the best looks at the tensions that tear at artists who want to devote their lives to their art but find themselves entangled in the affairs of humanity. It's also a very good portrait of the difficulties a woman in the 1950s had deciding between her career and her so-called womanly duties as a wife and mother. Directing/producing/writing team Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger did not--could not--make a bad film in the whole decade of the 1940's or the years bookending it, but with The Red Shoes they created one of the screen's great tragedies.

Powell & Pressburger's classic modern-day fairytale.

[jonathandoe_se7en · 8/10 · 8 September 2001]

I saw The Red Shoes for the third time yesterday, it's probably my third favourite Archers film after A Matter of life and death and Black Narcissus, I haven't commented on any of these films out of fear I would not be able to eloquently put into words my feelings on their work. But after seeing the meagre amount of comments this film has received, it's time to try.

The Red Shoes is one of the most exquisite pieces of art I have ever seen, every shot is tightly composed, brimming with colour and texture, there's a real feel of the hustle and bustle of the everyday world these characters inhabit. But unlike other Powell & Pressburger films, The Red Shoes is very weak when it comes to characters. As many have pointed out there aren't really any likable characters, most are either too meek or just not emphasized enough to get a real connection with them. No this should have been first and foremost a ballet film, that sadly only features one real dance sequence, the haunting production of the titular "Ballet of the Red Shoes".

The performances are good enough, with all three principals (Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring and Moira Shearer) delivering, but the script just doesn't fit them. However the ideas of the film are so timeless, that you can't help feel for all of them at the tragic conclusion. So I give The Red Shoes a rating of 8/10, mainly for the Red Shoes sequence and Jack Cardiff's cinematography. This is a classic that should be discovered by every generation.

A very good and involving

[851222 · 9/10 · 10 February 2020]

Greetings from Lithuania.

"The Red Shoes" (1948) surprised me of how involving and well made it was. I wasn't really expecting it much, because this genre is not really my type, but boy oh boy how involving this whole film was. It was superbly directed, staged and acted. The story was good and i liked storytelling. This movie was that good because i think of its amazing directing.

Overall, "The Red Shoes" tells a good and kinda sad story, and it does it in a very involving and superb way. Great movie.

Not the Archers' best

[zetes · 7/10 · 3 August 2002]

This was my first film by the Archers. I saw it two summers ago. I was moderately impressed, mostly by the centerpiece, the titular ballet, but felt that it lacked something, too. I was hoping that it would connect more on a second viewing, as at least one other Archers film did, Black Narcissus. Unfortunately, I liked it even less. Let me establish this right away: that centerpiece is one of the best pieces of cinema ever created. But each of the hours on either side of that is nothing special at best, something awful at worst. The direction is once in a while good, a couple of times great, but the script is generic and emotionless. The actors are generally dull. I disliked both Marius Goring and Anton Walbrook the first time around (both of whom I liked in other Archers films). I still didn't like Goring, but I absolutely hated Walbrook the second time. He seems to be channeling Hitler through most of the film, or maybe Werner Klemperer (especially when he makes that announcement at the end of the film). Part of it is certainly his character. Pressburger just doesn't give him any humanity whatsoever, and I just can't sympathize with him. I remember liking Moira Shearer a lot the first time around, but I found her acting pretty bad this time. I guess I was just fooled because she is so beautiful. That happens sometimes, of course. Can't criticize her dancing, though. She does a lot of mugging with those big, beautiful, deeply blue eyes, but not much acting. The only actor whom I still like is Léonide Massine, who plays Grischa, the lead male dancer. The script holds 90% of the film's problems. The characters are very poorly developed, for the most part. Walbrook's would be good if he weren't such an execrable one. The plot is made up of cliches, and the parts that are not seem rather forced to me. Yet I can't dislike the film. Powell and Pressburger are just too clever with their direction. I think, for instance, how romantic that scene in the buggy would be if it were to be found in A Matter of Life and Death, my favorite film from the pair. And the centerpiece! Again, I can't stress how much I love it. It brought me to tears. Of course, so did the rest of the film, but those were tears of boredom. I'll just proclaim that it is, if not the greatest sequence in cinema, the greatest sequence in cinema to be found in a mediocre film. 7/10.

Not an actor who dances, but a dancer who acts

[Red-125 · 9/10 · 6 November 2021]

The Red Shoes (1948) was co-written and co-directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It's based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. (I've read the fairy tale, and the plot of the movie does follow it, more or less.)

Anton Walbrook stars as Boris Lermontov, the director of a world-famous dance company. Julian Craster, a young composer, is portrayed by Marius Goring.

Of course, no one remembers these actors. The actor we all remember is Moira Shearer as ballet dancer Victoria Page. Shearer was a ballerina with the Sadler Wells company. She dances superbly, and her dancing is set off by her elegant beauty and her flaming red hair. (Did the producers pick a dancer with red hair to match the red shoes, or was that just a wonderful coincidence?)

This movie is almost 75 years old, and it shows its age. (However, it has been professionally restored.) Still, Shearer dancing in a ballet called The Red Shoes is a cinematic moment you can't forget.

The Red Shoes is a movie that everyone sort of thinks they've seen. However, I hadn't seen it, and now I'm really glad that I did. It has a very strong IMDb rating of 8.1. I thought that it was even better than that, and rated it 9.

An honest review

[AdFin · 7/10 · 16 December 2001]

This was the first film by directors Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger that I saw, and personally I didn't really like it that much. Later I saw A Matter of Life and Death and was blown away by its brilliance, but for me, The Red Shoes just didn't make enough of a connection. The Red Shoes is a very emotionless film, a film that revolves more around style and film techniques than story, a very sad fact as the film could have been one of the best ever if it had, had just a little more to do with the character's lives and emotions. I just didn't buy the predicament that Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) and the writer Julian Craster (Marius Goring) found themselves in; their love just didn't transfer well enough for me to feel that bothered at the end. The performances (with the exception of Anton Walbrook) where underwritten and not all that well performed, but if the film has a saving grace, then it has to be the dance of the red shoes sequence, if only the film had had more ballet in it I might have been able to give this film a higher vote, but alas no. This is the only real dance number in the film. That said it's still one of the greatest scenes I've ever seen, with Jack Cardiff's amazing use of colour and angles. Not a great film, but it has enough beauty in twenty minutes that some films lack in a two-hour running time, for that the film gets 7/10.

A Very Creative Movie About Creative Artists At Work

[Snow Leopard · 26 May 2005]

The resourceful approach that characterizes so many of the Michael Powell/ Emeric Pressburger collaborations makes "The Red Shoes" one of the most creative and interesting of any of the "back stage" movies that show the lives and dreams of creative artists at work. The characters are quite interesting in themselves, and the story brings out some worthwhile aspects of each of their natures while giving a realistic and often fascinating look at their world.

By no means do you have to be a ballet fan to appreciate and enjoy the story or the settings. While fully convincing in themselves, they are also set up so that the most important aspects and conflicts of the plot could easily be applied to those working in other creative fields as well.

Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, and Marius Goring make a nicely balanced and intriguing trio of main characters. The opening scenes work very well in bringing them together while being enjoyable to watch in themselves. From there, the creative tensions are built up steadily as the story itself becomes even more interesting. The script makes use of the best conventions of its genre, while never allowing itself to become formulaic.

There is also a good deal of creativity in many of the individual sequences. The opening scene at the opera is particularly clever in playing off of a viewer's initial expectations. The most spectacular sequence is the "red shoes" ballet segment itself, a very imaginative and enjoyable mini-movie that also parallels some of the main story's most interesting ideas. All in all, "The Red Shoes" well deserves its reputation as a distinctive classic.