Must See Movie Monday - The Red Shoes

Film: The Red Shoes
Release: 1948
Directors: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Starring: Moira Shearer, Marius Goring, Anton Walbrook
Short Summary: A young ballet dancer is torn between the love of a composer, and the pursuit of her dancing dreams with the controlling training of a ballet company director.

Why It's A Must See Movie

First of all I want of clear up a dependency of some of my facts. A while ago I posted a comment all this film and said it came out in 1939. According of IMDb it came out in 1948. Quite a difference. Though I swear I saw a documentary that said 1939, but maybe they were referring to something else. Anyway moving on to talking about the movie.

I've picked dance film for the second time. However, I think this is a dance movie anyone should watch and not just dancers. Mostly because the technical elements of the film are so beautifully done. The film's use of technicolor lovely and striking to the eye. The costumes and sets are perfection. I love the camera work which gives you such a great view of the actors reactions and is also visually interesting in the dancing parts.

I think what I like best about The Red Shoes is that it is a excellent example of how symbolism and foreshadowing can be used it film. This movie was one of the early films to use a longer ballet portion in the middle of the movie. This ballet is used as a vehicle to express to the audience what has happened in the character's real lives and what will happen later.

The symbolism comes from first of all the choice of doing a ballet version of Hans Christian Anderson's fairy-tale The Red Shoes. For those of you who don't know the fairy-tale is about a young girl who is greedy to get a pair of red dancing shoes. When she gets them and puts them on she finds she is unable to stop dancing. The story ends rather tragically. (Anderson tales usually do.) Thus the viewer of the film gets their first inkling that maybe things aren't going to go very well for Moira Shearer's character, Vicky. The ballet has an almost seamless transition from a normal ballet at the beginning to Vicky's dream ballet in the middle. The film uses that to show imagery that is mentioned earlier in the film and also to foreshadow that Vicky will have a choice to make between love and dance. Yep, this is one of those dance and normal life don't mix kind of movies. Other than the use of the ballet portion the movie uses sounds and various sights to foreshadow the ending events. I just love that.

I hope that you all check this movie out. It might not be everyone's cup of tea but I think if you're interested in either dance or film-making you should watch it at least once. Of course I like both dance and film so maybe I'm biased.