Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes is the kind of legendary film it pays to watch once in a while to remember that sometimes legends are not empty but contain some things that are quite real. It seems to me that the story of a young composer and aspiring ballet dancer still has considerable life to it while Anton Walbrook’s portrayal of the maniacal producer of the ballet company, at once an artistic hero and a destroyer of lives to suit his own purposes is breathtaking.
Despite the use of a Hans Christian Anderson story as the basis of the film superficially, The Rite of Spring is the more important inspiration. Anton Wallbrook is clearly a intended to remind us of Diagliev with his combination of artistic excellence and Barnum like promotion. The young composer reminds us a young Stravinsky, pre Firebird at least and the relationship between impresario and composer is compatible to that between Diagliev and Stravinsky. Even more is the basis of each story – the idea of a girl dancing to her death. A good part of the film is concerned with the idea of genius and the suffering that great art requires.
The idea of suffering for you art is so strong that people get terribly upset if you point out that many people suffer and many artists don’t particularly suffer more than anyone else. If any group of artists suffer for their art its ballet dancers. Any number of books by prima ballerinas describes the bleeding feet, starvation diets and almost mandatory drug use. The Red Shoes it shows the long hours of arduous practice but also meddling in private lives where marriage and even dating are not allowed. This is the main idea in The Red shoes, a ballerina must choose between her art and the composer she loves. It’s a hackneyed idea and wouldn’t make for much of a film if it wasn’t for the beauty of the film, not only the incredible red-headed beauty of Moira Shearer but also of the production as a whole, and by its connection to the legends of Diagliev, Stravinsky and The Rite of Spring.
1 comment:
loved it too but was slightly confused by the end--character played by Moira lives, yes..girl in ballet dies..or do they both die?
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