Moira Shearer "is a flame" in Michael Powell's Beautiful, Tragic, Ballet Masterpiece: THE RED SHOES.
Written: Feb 04 '00 (Updated Jun 06 '07)
Product Rating:
Pros: One of the few authentic tragedies created for the film medium.
Cons: The film is a modern primal fairy tale, ancient, neoteric, a box within a box.
The Bottom Line: THE RED SHOES may be the most beautiful and distinguished wedding of dance, music, and tragic romance on film. It is my choice for the finest film ever made.
The mark of a great poem is that we can't imagine a word changed or transposed. I can think of only two films which rise to this highest standard in Art. One is CITIZEN KANE (1941); the other is THE RED SHOES (1948). Of the two, THE RED SHOES is the greater because it is pure, universal and timeless.
This peerless film was the product of The Archers, a company of talented actors, photographers, scene designers, and composers, who in a period of ten years or so produced perhaps five of the finest films ever made: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP (1943), I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING (1945), STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN (1946), *BLACK NARCISSUS (1947) and THE TALES OF HOFFMANN (1951) They excelled in technicolor.
THE RED SHOES is their masterpiece.
Hungarian born Emeric Pressburger fashioned his screenplay after a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a little girl who is tempted by a magical shoemaker to put on a pair of red shoes, which cause her to dance herself to death. The story, of course, is an allegory of both life and art because what we most love and desire consumes us, leaving behind only the flame -- smoke and ash of our lives.
In his youth, Pressburger had known the story of the famous Ballet Impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who, for devious reasons, so wished to control his great premier danseur, Vaslov Nijinsky that he lured him away from his wife. Nijinsky, unstable to begin with, was unhinged and spent most of his life until his death in 1950 in a mental asylum. Pressburger took the ballet setting, changed the sexual identities of the characters, made the danseur into a ballerina and the wife into a male music conductor, and incorporated their story into his screenplay. (Shades of Tennessee Williams!)
Then, he and his collaborator Director Michael Powell commissioned the veteran dancer/choreographer Leonide Massine, who had worked for Diaghilev, to create a ballet of "The Red Shoes," which would illustrate their themes, set to music by Brian Easdale. They hired Massine to direct the dancers, and play The Shoemaker.
For the ballet impresario in their screenplay, Boris Lermontov, they cast one of their regulars, also an Hungarian, Anton Walbrook, whom Powell considered an amalgam of himself and Pressburger. And for the conductor they chose another regular, Marius Goring.
Director Powell, though English, was a Celt at heart, and he often picked Scots or redheads for his leading ladies. This time he got both. He found a young Scottish second lead dancer Moira Shearer to play Victoria Page, his ballerina.
As you watch the film, you might consider that another of its layers of meaning relates to the above process in conceiving it.
Jack Cardiff, whom The Archers had nurtured, did the photography. The next year he would go to work for Alfred Hitchcock and other directors.
[There followed UNDER CAPRICORN (Hitchcock, 1949), *PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (Lewin, 1951), THE AFRICAN QUEEN (Huston, 1951), *THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA (Mankiewicz, 1954), THE VIKINGS (Fleischer, 1958), *WAR AND PEACE (Vidor, 1968) down to CONAN THE DESTROYER (Fleischer again, 1984), to name a few.]
With the help of Massine, and Designers Hein Heckroth and Arthur Lawson, the brilliant Cardiff adapted Technicolor to British lighting for the ballet stage, and created the film's great technical innovation: a sweeping, fluid camera that moved among dancers in the ballet sequences. The spotlight he had made in order to create these scenes is known to this day as The Bomb. And to this day these scenes are startling, beautiful.
The story on paper is simple (as most great stories are, at first look). A young amateur ballerina, Vicki Page, at a party, meets the manager of a ballet company, Boris Lermontov. Something about her attracts him, and he gives her a job. At the same time, he hires a young composer-conductor, Julian Craster. Lermontov commissions Craster to compose a ballet based on "The Red Shoes" to debut Vicki. The ballet is a huge success and makes Vicki a star. Both men fall in love with her. She gives up her stardom to marry Craster, and the plot pivots on the question, will Lermontov be able to lure her back to her first love, the dance?
And so, THE RED SHOES is a story within a story, a film within a film, a dance within a film. It was the first time a complete 20 minute original ballet was incorporated within a dramatic motion picture. There are few, if any, other examples. Art imitates life and life imitates art endlessly in THE RED SHOES.
When The Archers finished the film, The J. Arthur Rank Company did not wish to release it, fearing derision; did so reluctantly. Neither did Rank wish to invest in the cost of making prints for the American market.
However . . .
THE RED SHOES, in the course of a general release across The United States, ran for two years at a theater in New York City, and is credited with causing the acceptance of ballet as a popular art form among the middle class of the United States. It had a particular following among little girls.
THE RED SHOES was nominated for five Academy Awards in 1948, a rarity for a foreign film at the time. It won two: Best Art Direction/Set Decoration (Color) and Best Original Dramatic/Comedy Score.
Anton Walbrook's Lermontov is one of the most powerful and hypnotic performances on film. The concizing of the story and the dance is unrivaled. "The Ballet of the Red Shoes" and its score is as infectious and memorable as any in all of Cinema. The climax of the film is one of the few to bring one to tears honestly. Its truth is primal, visceral.
Some years ago, I befriended a young woman who had lived a hard, fast life. She was to die a few years later of AIDS. One night, she was dumped on my doorstep recovering from gunshot wounds. I nursed her for a couple of weeks until she could recuperate a bit and find a place to live. One evening, for a class, I was watching THE RED SHOES while she lay on the couch, where she slept. At the end of the film, as the candle guttered out, she began to sob. She could not stop. THE RED SHOES, she clearly saw, was her story.
With any gift for introspection, many of us will see our own lives reflected in its light.
The techniques of THE RED SHOES, applied to the Hollywood commercial film, may be seen in AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951) and SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952).
I have suggested elsewhere that Hitchcock, something of a student of Michael Powell, and vice versa, was influenced by THE RED SHOES. (See references to "redheads" and "falling" in my review of *VERTIGO.) Given his phobia about redheads, one can almost hear him drawl, "You know, in Andersen's original story, he cut off her feet with a hatchet!"
And the beautiful, red haired Moira Shearer? She chose to stay with the ballet for a time. She did make a few other films: THE TALES OF HOFFMANN (Powell, 1951), THE MAN WHO LOVED REDHEADS (Harold French, 1955), the notorious PEEPING TOM (for Powell again, 1960), and BLACK TIGHTS (Young, 1960). Then she retired to become what used to be called a matron and happily raised a large family.
I shall always remember, in the film, the Manager of the Ballet de Monte Carlo describing the dancing of Victoria Page: "She is a flame!"
Moira Shearer as Victoria Page still is!
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Note: In February 2001, it was announced that Cinematographer Jack Cardiff, now 86, still working in England, would be given an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement at the next Academy Award Ceremonies.
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Note: April 29, 2005 -- It was announced today that what would have been Michael Powell's 100th Birthday will be celebrated at Cannes this year. His widow, Thelma Schoonmaker (a distinguished film editor, in her own right), and perhaps Jack Cardiff, will be in attendance. Six of Powell's films will be shown, including THE RED SHOES.
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Note: February 14, 2006 -- Moira Shearer died on January 31st of this year, at the age of eighty. She had been married to Ludovico Kennedy, the British crime writer and TV personality, just short of 50 years. She is survived by her husband and four children.
Not by nature a sentimental person in regard to most celebrity, I was saddened by the news of her death.
She was, as Viki Page, the ballerina in THE RED SHOES, as a dancer and/or actress in a couple of other films, and as an author and lecturer, a wife and mother, a person of extraordinary beauty, grace and intelligence.
I shall not forget her.
[Macresarf1]
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To read reviews of some of the films Macresarf1 refers to above, copy, past in your browser, and go to the following:
A ballerina with magical, cursed shoes loves a composer but dances for an impresario. Directed by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger.More at HotMovieSale.com
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