The Red Shoes (U.)
1948. Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
Starring Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring. 133 mins.
Although it is in the telly friendly 4:3 ratio, it is one to see on the big screen; projected there is so much more to The Red Shoes than the film you’ve probably become very accustomed to watching curled up on a sofa on a wet afternoon.
It’s filmed in Glorious Technicolor (no other collocation is acceptable) and few films have ever looked so good. The story is a backstage melodrama about two exciting young talents, composer Goring and ballerina Shearer, who fall under the tyrannical wing of obsessive ballet director Lermantov (Walbrook) but Powell and Pressburger send it spiralling away into heartrending, impressionistic fantasy.
I have zero interest in ballet and would probably be gruffly affronted if you suggested I did, but the film’s centrepiece - a 15 minute sequence of Shearer performing the title ballet - is simply the most exhilarating, inventive and magical film sequence seen in cinemas this year.
Martin Scorsese calls it, “Truly the most beautiful Technicolour film ever made,” and his own organisation, The Film Foundation, were involved in the three year process of bringing it back to its former glory. (The credits for the restoration run longer than those for the film.)
1948. Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
Starring Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring. 133 mins.
Although it is in the telly friendly 4:3 ratio, it is one to see on the big screen; projected there is so much more to The Red Shoes than the film you’ve probably become very accustomed to watching curled up on a sofa on a wet afternoon.
It’s filmed in Glorious Technicolor (no other collocation is acceptable) and few films have ever looked so good. The story is a backstage melodrama about two exciting young talents, composer Goring and ballerina Shearer, who fall under the tyrannical wing of obsessive ballet director Lermantov (Walbrook) but Powell and Pressburger send it spiralling away into heartrending, impressionistic fantasy.
I have zero interest in ballet and would probably be gruffly affronted if you suggested I did, but the film’s centrepiece - a 15 minute sequence of Shearer performing the title ballet - is simply the most exhilarating, inventive and magical film sequence seen in cinemas this year.
Martin Scorsese calls it, “Truly the most beautiful Technicolour film ever made,” and his own organisation, The Film Foundation, were involved in the three year process of bringing it back to its former glory. (The credits for the restoration run longer than those for the film.)
