The Red Shoes

The Red Shoes has always been one of the most visually ravishing films, even in the slightly faded, slightly scuffed form that has been in circulation for as long as most of us can remember. We should all be thankful that it's Scorcese's favourite movie as the sparkling restoration he initiated is truly a thing of beauty. The reds pop from the screen and the blues are almost too lovely, while Moira Shearer's hair would make anyone want to be a redhead. Only Powell and Pressburger could have made such a film in 1940s Britain. It combines intense theatricality with vivid location shooting without ever feeling like two halves have been stitched together. It weaves high melodrama around the kernel of a fairy tale, and dares to spend 20 minutes on The Red Shoes ballet itself. It doesn't matter that the latter, as we see it, could *never* happen on stage: it starts and ends within the proscenium arch but inbetween every trick in the cinematic book is used as the dance becomes more surreal and disturbing (shadows worthy of Nosferatu clutch at the girl; dancers become first flowers then white birds; a man-shaped piece of newspaper transforms into a newsprint-covered man) Vicky's whole dilemma is encapsulated within that sequence and her subsequent jump from the railway bridge ironically echoes the elegant shape of the dancers as they are lifted by their partners. Torn between the demands of her husband (to leave the ballet company and make a life with him) and Lermontov (to give her life to dance) she suffers the same fate as in her most famous role.
The performances have to carry the weight of what could have been an extremely silly premise. The fact that real dancers are used immediately sells both the ballet scenes as well as the behind the scenes glimpses of a company in rehearsal and on the move. There's a simple joy in watching professionals hone their craft. The main burden though is shouldered by the mighty, multi-lingual Anton Walbrook, here a million miles away from his gallant Theo in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (anyone who doubts his range should watch the scene here where he explains why he wants to leave Germany to come to live in England) Lermontov is a monster but one whose motives the audience totally understands. Creating art is the be-all-and-end-all for him and he expects his collaborators to be equally driven. Anyone so foolish enough to cross him, or worse, fall in love, is cut loose - and yet he's willing to woo back both Irina and Vicky after their marriages, and both are equally willing to return to this alternate family. The hints of the conflicting emotions raging beneath his outwardly calm facade make Lermontov one of the great Powell and Pressburger characters, while his final speech (starting loud, as though the emotion is finally bursting out, but gradually quietening as he becomes more human than he ever has previously) invariably reduces me to tears. One of the great, great films of world cinema and yet not even the best film that Powell and Pressburger made (that would be A Matter of Life and Death). They were THAT good.