Reviewed by Mike Martin
Stars Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring, Moira Shearer, Jean Short, Gordon Littmann, Julia Lang, Bill Shine, Léonide Massine, Austin Trevor, Esmond Knight, Eric Berry, Irene Browne
Written by Emeric Pressburger
Certification UK U | Australia G
Runtime 135 minutes
Directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
Who says critics never do any good? Money raised by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has gone into restoring this landmark piece of British cinema, and it looks absolutely glorious. The original film, which was Technicolour at its radiant best, has been digitally remastered and it’s clearly been a labour of love – but boy is it worth it. Praise too to Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation and the UCLA – indeed, to everyone involved in the project. It was worth sweating over every frame, which looks like it was struck yesterday.
It’s difficult to overstate how important directors Powell and Pressburger were to the British film industry in the 1940s and 50s, but what’s amazing is how fresh and relevant their films still are. They covered just about every genre, from war classics Colonel Blimp and A Matter Of Life and Death, to the Thomas Hardy-esque Gone To Earth and A Canterbury Tale, to the heady eroticism of Black Narcissus and the way-ahead-of-its-time Peeping Tom, which for many was the end of Powell’s career. The Red Shoes is considered by many to be their absolute masterpiece, and seeing it again in this restored version it’s hard to argue.
For first-timers it’s essentially a story of art versus life – can you be a brilliant artist and have a private life and be happy too? The art in question here is ballet, with Moira Shearer’s dancer Victoria Page striving to be one of the great leading ladies. From a modest start as a chorus line girl at Covent Garden she is taken under the wing of fearsome director Lermontov, played with chilling, dapper charm by Walbrook. It’s a classic Pygmalion story, with Lermontov pushing Victoria hard to turn her into one of the greats. She makes the breakthrough with an extraordinary performance of the Red Shoes, based on the fairy tale of a dancer killed by her shoes which refuse to stop dancing.
Victoria however becomes romantically involved with Lermontov’s composer, the young Craster (Goring), and the furious director sets about putting an end to the affair which he believes will end her career. As wonderful as the leads are, the real star of the film is the cinematography by the great Jack Cardiff, who died earlier this year. Covent Garden looks lush, even in post-war brown Britain, but when the company set up in Monte Carlo the photography comes into its own. The Med has never looked bluer, the trees greener, and Shearer’s hair is so flame-red it threatens to set fire to the celluloid. The actual Red Shoes sequence uses some trickery – double exposures – but even the creaky effects look charming rather than dated. It’s a quite extraordinary sequence in which the filming of a ballet and the dance itself seem to blur together in a dizzying, thrilling spectacle.
For some the ending was too bleak, but the writers pointed out that in the original tale the film is based on a woodsman hacks off the ballerina’s feet to stop her dancing. It’s certainly an intense experience that sears itself into your head with those glorious visuals. The debate about Powell and Pressburger’s best film may rage on but this release has pushed the Red Shoes back to the top of the list. It will have to be a spectacular restoration of Black Narcissus to beat it…now there’s an idea. Anyone got some spare cash?