Review: The Red Shoes (1948)

The Red Shoes is a film that, while having several incredibly good scenes, is unable to properly gel these scenes together, and therefore suffers.

Now, let me first highlight the great parts, since there are quite a few:

The acting is very good across the board, with Moira Shearer being quite good as Vicki Page, especially for a premiere acting performance, and Anton Walbrook is also quite good as the dominating, borderline sociopathic ballet producer Boris Lermontov. On top of this, the directing duo of Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell do a very good job at balancing the fantastical and the dramatic.

Of course, one cannot speak of this film and not gush over the absolutely ravishing 17 minute long ballet that dominates the middle portion of the film. Having absolutely beautiful choreography, along with Jack Cardiff's mind-blowingly beautiful cinematography, and wondrous music, it's one of the best dance fantasy sequences put to film, and is a brillant showcase of Cardiff's talents as a cinematographer. The colors are simply beyond description, and I highly recommend it to those who either enjoy dance, non-verbal storytelling, or simply good filmmaking. It tells the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tail story of a girl who buys a pair of red dancing shoes from a mysterious cobbler, only to find herself cursed to dance until she collapses dead from exhaustion. It fits the central theme of the film about obsessively pursing perfection regardless of the consequences quite well, better then the rest of the movie in fact.

That leads me to my major flaw of the film, which is the story. It's a simple one, but unfocused. Part of it is a love story between the ballerina and her composer boyfriend, while the other half focuses on how the dominating theater director tries to control the ballerina. The overall pacing the film is rather slow, and it seems a bit undecided as if to paint Anton Walbrook's director as the tyrannical egomaniac that he is. When Vicki is faced to choose between her boyfriend and dancing, she freaks out and runs outside and throws herself in front of a train. It should be noted that this ending sequence is actually very well done, where the director's affable persona completely collapses to reveal the dominating sociopath underneath, and how he utterly breaks Vicki to the point of her committing suicide.

However, as I said before, due to the fact that the film is unsure of which side to choose, this scene feels like it's lacking impact. We really don't spend much time developing the romance between Vicki and her boyfriend, which means that when she's forced to choose, it's harder to see why she's freaking out, since I haven't been given time to really FEEL their romance, and therefore the value in it. On the other hand, the director is still rather sympathetic throughout, which means when he finally unveils his sociopathic nature, it comes as a bit of a surprise. It's kinda sadistically satisfying to see his dream crushed, since he was the one who did it. Of course, the film doesn't paint him as a villain, but merely ambitious, so this makes it more frustrating, and robs the film of what could have been a much darker story of a man who obsessively pressures a gifted person into self destruction.

And a minor quibble, due to the obvious metaphor of The Red Shoes Ballet coming in the middle of the movie, the third act of the film drags, which is also the same act in which the romance is introduced and the full start of darkness for the theater manager appears. In my humble opinion, I feel that it would have worked a bit better to put the sprawling dance sequence as the finale, with it serving as a visual representation of the themes of the film, with it then blurring the lines of reality and illusion as Vicki slowly looses her mind.

But that's just me.

But all in all, I found the film to have several really great moments, but a story that had difficultly holding those moments together, which leads to the film missing the mark for me.

It's a good film, but in my opinion, not a great one. Watch the 17 minute dance sequence for sure, it's possibly one of the best put to screen, but the rest of the runtime lacks that fantastical or emotional heft.

3 stars.