Welcome back to another entry in the Oscar Film Journal, 2025!
Today I'll be reviewing a classic early color film from 1948, a British production entitled The Red Shoes, co-directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. This whimsical film is about an up-and-coming ballet dancer who becomes an overnight sensation but is quickly forced to choose between her art and her love life, by her domineering company director. The narrative is simple and familiar, but the storytelling is handled so artfully, particularly in a stunning 17-minute ballet centerpiece, that the film defies genre and has become a favorite of many lauded directors.
The central figures in the story are the aforementioned dancer Vicky Page, whose wealthy aunt petitions the ballet director Boris to give her an audition, and a music student Julian Craster whose work was plagiarized in one of Boris's productions. Both young artists impress Boris immediately with their dedication to their craft, and he takes them under his wing, sometimes displaying megalomaniacal tendencies. Vicky gets an unexpected opportunity when the company's prima ballerina is fired for getting married - the romantically unfulfilled Boris is incapable of working with anyone who has something he doesn't - and her big break is a new ballet called The Red Shoes (based on the Hans Christian Andersen fable about a girl whose magic ballet slippers literally dance her to death), for which Julian has written the music. Her performance stuns the ballet world and the company enjoys months of touring success, but Boris is later horrified to learn that Vicky and Julian have fallen in love, and finds himself at an impasse with his two star protégés.
The film stars accomplished ballerina Moira Shearer as Vicky, in a shockingly effective performance for such an inexperienced actor (the filmmakers chose to cast dancers rather than actors to ensure realism on the boards). She begins the film wide-eyed and driven to succeed, and by the finale she is hopelessly torn between the two men in her life, both of whom need her for selfish reasons. As Boris Lermontov, Austrian actor Anton Walbrook proves a complex character, at times overbearing and callous, at others nurturing and supportive (Boris's sexual orientation and perhaps lack of acceptance thereof is an easy piece of subtext to read into the performance). And as Julian, Marius Goring is the quintessential conflicted artist, crippled at deciding between his life's work and his insecurities about his relationship with Vicky.
The story is relatable, the performances very strong, but the film's real star is the cinematography by Jack Cardiff, who would go on to film The African Queen and Rambo: First Blood Part II (of all things). Cardiff creates great atmosphere in his use of angular shots and dripping Technicolor, and of course his coup de grace is the aforementioned Red Shoes sequence, where Vicky's performance drifts into dreamlike surrealism. This scene is masterfully executed and proved very influential on films like An American in Paris and Singin' In the Rain.
The Red Shoes is a great example of Roger Ebert's old adage "It's not what a film is about, it's HOW it is about it." Here is a story that could've been a run-of-the-mill drama about professional ambition and being consumed by one's art, but it's handled in such a stylistic and visually engaging way it's elevated above its contemporaries.
I give the film ***1/2 out of ****.
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