The Red Shoes

All the best fairytales have a dark sub-theme and this certainly proves to be the case with the re-release of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1948 classic The Red Shoes. Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) is the Prima Ballerina cast in a production of Hans Christian Anderson’s eponymous tale. A dancer consumed by her art, she finds herself torn between the career she lives for, under the passionate mentoring of the artistically envious producer Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), and the love of her life, composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring). With a sublime ballet sequence, filmed in colour Degas himself would be proud of, Shearer prophetically works her red shoes like a perky little swan before outside forces doom her happiness. The feminist inclination is highlighted by the ambiguous ending, served well by the tormented Page, but the show-stealer is the self-destructive Lermontov whose performance perfectly reflects the ballerina, his disciplined composure thinly veiling a simmering undercurrent of obsession and resentment. Beautiful stuff.