The Red Shoes: Revisiting an enchanting masterpiece
“You cannot have it both ways. A dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love can never be a great dancer.”
This line is spoken by Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s visually sumptuous The Red Shoes. Born out of the wonderfully vivid and vastly imaginative minds of two filmmaking legends, The Red Shoes explores every true artist’s great dilemma — choosing between creative ambition and true love — in grand fashion.
Though the film is a tragedy, like the eponymous play, it doesn’t look like one. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger weave their tale around three principal characters — the promising ballerina Victoria Page (Moira Shearer), the brilliant and ambitious young composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring), and the intimidating and charismatic impresario Boris Lermontov.
Lermontov disapproves of anyone who abandons their promising career to pursue a love life. When one of his promising ballerinas gets married, he makes a cold-hearted display of indifference. Victoria becomes her replacement, and, though her attempts to get noticed are initially ignored, she eventually wins Lermontov over. Upon recognising her potential, Lermontov casts her in his new ballet, titled “The Red Shoes”, for which Julian writes the score. The show opens in Monte Carlo and is met with tremendous applause. Elated, Lermontov treats Victoria like a queen and starts making her plans. But when Victoria falls in love with Julian, he is outraged.
When most British filmmakers including David Lean were content with making black-and-white films in the 1940s, Powell and Pressburger — collectively known as The Archers — dreamed big. A majority of their films are characterised by colourful characters, enchanting visuals, and imaginative storytelling. It all started with their 1943 film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which was followed by A Matter of Life and Death in 1946, Black Narcissus in 1947, and The Red Shoes in 1948. Each of these films was shot in stunning Technicolor and served as testaments to the duo’s filmmaking genius.
In The Red Shoes, they merged two of the finest art forms — cinema and dance — in a way that other directors can only dream of. Speaking of dreams, that’s exactly what these films look like. I remember reading that Gene Kelly was inspired to make An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain after seeing The Red Shoes.
You can also feel its influence in Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan. Vincent Cassel’s character is modelled on Lermontov. The inspiration for Lermontov came to the Archers from Alexander Korda, a Hungarian-born British film producer-director. As Lermontov, Walbrook is a towering presence and is easily my favourite character in the film. The immensely sophisticated Austrian actor also appeared in another Powell and Pressburger film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, as a sympathetic German officer. Lermontov is an enigmatic figure and, in my opinion, one of those movie characters that deserve to be studied by film historians and students. It’s hard to tell what drives him.
The main highlight of The Red Shoes is the splendidly shot eponymous ballet — a dazzling 17-min long sequence replete with light, colours, and photographic effects (courtesy of cinematographer Jack Cardiff). The film won Oscars for Best Art Direction and Best Music, and deservedly so. To lend the film a sense of authenticity, some of the very eminent figures from the world of ballet were made part of it. Moira Shearer, who plays Victoria, used to have a promising ballet career with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company. She has also starred in the Archers’ subsequent films The Tales of Hoffman and Michael Powell’s independent feature Peeping Tom.
