Finn Morse
Cinematography is film’s most individual strength. The term “motion picture” promises a moving image, and that image can be anything. For the medium to fulfill that promise, the line cannot be drawn: it must keep moving. To leave an undeniable mark, the needle must always be pushed forward. In other words, don’t stop dancing.
The mainstreaming of Technicolor in the late 1930s was the hottest new trick since the coming of sound in 1927. The fresh new look made the medium more vibrant and loosened the jar for innovators to begin cooking. The collaborations between British director Michael Powell and German director Emeric Pressburger are potent examples of Technicolor in 1940s cinema. Just glance at sets from A Matter of Life and Death (1946), or matte paintings from Black Narcissus (1947). With those breakout hits, the like-minded duo had their sights set on pushing the visual medium forward. But on top of their initiative in the world of movies, the pair made efforts to publicize art forms hitherto unseen on the big screen.
The Red Shoes (1948) is the thesis statement for Powell and Pressburger’s collective strengths. It has the eye-popping colors; it has the beautiful sets and matte paintings. But to explicitly spotlight The Red Shoes, The Archers did the impossible by making dance and ballet viable on film. Making use of the separate mediums of film and dance, The Red Shoes lives by its unwavering respect for ballet with vibrant visual dynamism.
The story follows Victoria Page (Moira Shearer), a ballet prodigy looking to make her start by catching the eye of stage director Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook). With a hot new script from composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring), Lermontov casts Page as the lead performer. Following the show’s roaring international success, Page and Craster develop a deep infatuation with one another, causing Lermontov to be dismayed. The performance begins to mirror the tale of these three characters, promises of fame and accolades met with eventual tragedy. The dance seeps into reality, a promise of fame and acclaim ultimately eclipsed by human greed and stinging jealousy.
What makes The Red Shoes a visual marvel is its innovations. Production designer Hein Heckroth wasn’t a filmmaker before production; he was a painter. Heckroth’s goal of creating a great image first and foremost gave the movie a new order of operations. The objective is to awe, and awe it does. Alongside his collaborator Ivor Beddoes, Heckroth created 2,000 sketches on unique oil paintings that served as storyboards.
Only after visuals were created did dance co-choreographers Léonide Massine and Robert Helpmann and composer Brian Easdale begin working. Massine also appears in the film as its in-universe choreographer. His character, Grischa Ljubov, dances in the show and debates Lermontov and Craster about the musical score. His performance is expressive, and his stage makeup is sinister. The compositions by Easdale are consistently dramatic whether we’re in or outside the theater. It’s very fitting thematically, given how the line between the show and reality blurs throughout the story. Not only does this plot point appear in the music, but it also appears in the visuals.
The storyboards gave cinematographer Jack Cardiff the ultimate creative freedom. Some of these shots feel like they’re on fire with their vivid impossibility, made possible only by colors and matte paintings. Cardiff’s precursor collaboration with the Archers, Black Narcissus, also made great use of matte paintings to create mountains and valleys on Hollywood sets during the editing process. With The Red Shoes, Cardiff and editor Reginald Mills meld fantastical dance halls and intricate ceilings with the live actors. As a result, the movie features dynamic shots that match the directors’ vision and their creative ensemble. They went so far that Technicolor’s founders, Natalie and Herbert T. Kalmus, considered The Red Shoes to be the single finest example of Three-Strip Technicolor.
These claims are made whole by a 17-minute dance sequence, in which we finally see the story of the titular ballet. Zero dialogue, all composition and dance. Page’s character gracefully leaps into a pair of bright red shoes that magically bind to her feet, compelling her to dance. What follows are the visual wonders of a dancer swept up in passion. The visuals are abstract and inexplicable, exactly what someone in their element would see rather than dull, ordinary life.
Page’s character realizes that the shoes are stuck to her, puppeteering her to dance no matter how exhausted she gets. The ballet concludes with her character’s dramatic end, the cursed shoes put up for sale for the next unknowing dancer. Cinematographer Cardiff even tweaked the recording rate to make the ensemble hover for longer during their leaps and jumps. The scene took six weeks to film and used a 53-dancer company. What resulted is the film’s finest scene.
Much like the actual ballet, the lead performances are landmark, but they become much more interesting when examined more closely. The character Lermontov is a case study of two potentially different men, both authoritarian creatives. The first, Russian art critic and ballet enthusiast Sergei Diaghilev, was infamous for firing his muse, ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. The pair were closely involved before Nijinsky’s sudden marriage, which led Diaghilev to fire him out of spite.
The second was directors Powell and Pressburger’s first mentor, Hungarian film director Alexander Korda, and their working relationship with him. Anton Walbrook’s portrayal of Lermontov parallels these figures. At first, he is a helpful producer capable of lifting up newfound stars like Korda, who introduced Powell and Pressburger. Soon, the performance turns bitter, as the jealous Diaghilev tries to separate lovers Page and Craster.
Lermontov could have bound Page to “The Ballet of the Red Shoes” to eventually win her affections, a classic love triangle play. Alternatively, Lermontov, a creative producer rather than an artist, could be clinging to Page for her talents. He isn’t an artist. He can never become a great composer like Craster, nor become a dancer like Page.
Lermontov represents a misunderstanding of the pursuit of art. Where Page and Craster begin the story with hopes of achieving greatness through their passions, Lermontov seeks to cling to their coattails. For without talent to promote, a producer is nothing. Either interpretation is viable thanks to Walbrook’s brilliant, subtle performance, but the thesis is clear: some people cannot accept change. Lermontov fights to maintain an illusion and refuses to acknowledge the changing reality. He never wants Page — or the world of ballet — to stop dancing. And because of that, she never will.
Before production, Michael Powell cast Moira Shearer for her ballet skills first, acting skills second. Shearer refused him, her defenses lasting a calendar year before she finally accepted the part. When recounting her experience shooting the film, Shearer admitted it was grueling. Not only was she dancing for hours on end, but she also suffered multiple injuries and persistent nightmares from filming. Much like her on-screen persona, Shearer suffered so that others could enjoy watching a beautiful art form, none the wiser.
The twisted irony is that, with every layer of the story, it asks the same question again and again. Is it worth suffering to pursue greatness? The ballet performer loses herself in her dancing, Page gives up happiness to stay on tour, and Shearer goes on to lose sleep over what happened to her on set. The discourse has rambled on through the years since the film’s release. But in the case of all three…their art turned out to be fantastic.
Putting ballet in the movies was an improbable soirée. Ballet was considered the highest-brow art form of the late 1940s, according to Life Magazine. Musical extravaganza films were much lower on the scale. Combining the two media had been done before — The Ballerina (1937) — but never to such a maximalist degree. For its boldness, The Red Shoes went on to influence filmmakers everywhere. Watching it again and again, movie star Gene Kelly talked it up to every producer in the business. Extended dances in Singin’ In The Rain (1952) and Best Picture-winning An American In Paris (1951) are Shoes’ spiritual successors.
Director Martin Scorsese hails it as his favorite film and has even amassed a small museum of rare props and costumes. Scorsese and his long-time editor Thelma Schoonmaker — who married director Powell in 1984 — polished a 4K digital restoration in 2009. The work by Shearer, Powell, Pressburger, Cardiff, and Heckroth will dance forever on the big screen.
Watching The Red Shoes for the first time at age 18, I considered it one of the finest films I’d ever seen. For the following years, I continued to find myself in the worlds of Powell and Pressburger; the endless staircase of A Matter of Life and Death and the cold, dark alps of Black Narcissus. Yet when I hear their names and think of their projects, I always return to the one I saw first. In its vibrant colors, enthralling dance, and cautionary tale of greed in entertainment, The Red Shoes never stops dancing. Not that I would want them to. In my opinion, it is the finest film of the 1940s, and the grandest demonstration of how film can transform live stage entertainment into something entirely its own.
