Themes: Dancer's Life, Love Triangles, Star-Crossed Lovers
Main Cast: Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring, Moira Shearer, Léonide Massine, Albert Basserman
Release Year: 1948
Country: UK
Run Time: 136 minutes
Plot
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's influential musical tragedy set the stage for the climactic dance ballets that became a staple of the Arthur Freed-MGM musicals (An American in Paris, Singin' in the Rain and The Band Wagon) of the early 1950s. Hans Christian Andersen's tragic fairy tale forms the basis of this film about betrayal, love and art. The story begins as struggling composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring) attends a performance of the Lermontov Ballet Company and recognizes his own score in the production of "Hearts of Fire." Julian protests to ballet company director Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) about the unauthorized use of his music. Impressed by Julian's talent, Boris hires him to compose the score for his next ballet -- a dance version of "The Red Shoes." Boris also hires an attractive young dancer, Victoria Page (Moira Shearer), to perform in the ballet. When the lead ballerina announces that she plans to get married, Boris, in a pique over being abandoned, casts Victoria in the starring role. As Julian works on the score and Victoria struggles to perfect her dance technique, the two fall in love. When "The Red Shoes" ballet is premiered -- seen in a stunning and glorious fifteen-minute sequence -- it is a raging success and it makes Victoria a star. But when Boris learns that Julian and Victoria have fallen in love, Boris, who is secretly in love with Victoria, in a fit of rage forces Julian to leave the ballet company; Victoria leaves with him. Since Boris owns the rights to "The Red Shoes" ballet, he forbids Victoria to perform the dance and she becomes unemployable. Time passes and Julian and Victoria are now happily married. Julian's compositions have made him an international success. One day, with Victoria disembarking from a train in Paris, she meets Boris, who implores her to do one performance of "The Red Shoes" in Monaco. Victoria agrees as Julian cancels an engagement in London to travel to Monte Carlo in order to convince his wife not to perform the ballet. But Victoria goes on with the performance, with tragic results. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
Review
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1948 film The Red Shoes was, for nearly four decades, the most successful British movie ever released in America. Movies had used ballet as a subject before -- including a pair of Hollywood bombs, Spectre of the Rose, which had the virtue of being bizarre and humorous, and The Unfinished Dance, which was itself a remake of a pre-World War II French film called Ballerina -- but the public had mostly ignored them. The Red Shoes, by contrast, seemed to draw audiences into its spell, virtually one theater at a time. In New York, it played to sell-out crowds at a single theater in Manhattan for almost two years before going into wide release, by which time word of the film had spread sufficiently to make it a hit throughout the country. Powell described attending The Red Shoes as a ritual for middle-class mothers and their daughters, although it was sufficiently well-known by 1949 to rate an oblique mention in a Three Stooges short, "Some More of Samoa." The movie had started life as a proposed screenplay, written by Pressburger for Merle Oberon before World War II, which never saw production -- the intervening war and its aftermath led to a major change in its focus, from romantic melodrama to art. Powell and Pressburger sincerely believed that having spent four years dying in the name of freedom and liberty, the world was ready to see a movie that suggested it was now alright to die in the name of art. The public (outside of England, where critics panned the movie and it closed very quickly) responded in kind, in what was the first huge "art-house" success in postwar cinema. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Robert Helpmann - Ivan Boleslawsky; Esmond Knight - Livingstone 'Livy' Montagne; Ludmilla Tcherina - Irina Boronskaja; Derek Elphinstone - Lord Oldham; Irene Browne - Lady Neston; Austin Trevor - Prof. Palmer; Eric Berry - Dimitri; Yvonne Andre - Vicky's Dresser; Robert Dorning - Dancer; Julia Lang - A Balletomane; Gordon Littman - Ike; Hay Petrie - Boisson; Marcel Poncin - M. Boudin; Bill Shine - Her Mate; Jean Short - Terry; Jerry Verno - Stagedoor Keeper; George Woodbridge - Doorman; Guy Massey - Dancer; Emeric Pressburger; Joan Harris - Solo Dancer; Michel Bazalgette - M. Rideaut; Denis Carey - Dancer
