Rating: 
Summary: An Absolutely Magnificent Movie
Review: This is a magnificent movie, one of the most voluptuous ever filmed (in Technicolor), one of the most influential, and one of the most satisfyingly melodramatic. Every bit of it works. At the most simplistic, it's a fairy tale, Hans Christian Andersen's The Red Shoes, that takes place in a ballet, which is repeated in real life.
At the heart of the movie is Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), the imperious impresario of The Ballet Lermontov. He can be cold, charming, ruthless. At a party he says, "If some fat harriden is going to sing, I must go. I can't stand amateurs." He's enigmatic except for his dedication to ballet. At that same party he meets Victoria Page (Moira Shearer), a young ballet dancer, and is intrigued by her.
"Why do you want to dance?" he asks her.
"Why do you want to live?"
"I don't know exactly why, but I must," he says.
"That's my answer, too."
He brings her into his ballet company and also hires Julian Craster, a young composer. Later, with three weeks to create a ballet, he has Craster compose the music to the story of The Red Shoes. Victoria Page will dance it. It is a triumph, but Page leaves the Ballet Lermontov to marry Craster. Lermontov is outraged and swears he'll never see her again. She needs to dance, though, and Lermontov slowly realizes he wants her back, completely dedicated to dancing, because he can make her a great dancer. He subtly woos her back to dance the ballet again, with tragic results.
The ballet of the red shoes is the story of a young girl, engaged to be married who loves to dance and longs to go the village fair. She spies a pair of red dancing shoes in the window of a shoemaker. Despite the reluctance of her fiance, she dons the shoes and begins to dance. She has a joyous time. As she tires, however, the shoes won't let her stop dancing and she can't take them off. She dances until she dies.
The movie works so well on so many levels. Anton Walbrook is marvelous. He can be cold and demanding and devious as Lermontov, but he conveys exactly Lermontov's utter dedication. At the end of the movie when Lermontov, alone on the stage, announces to the audience Victoria Page's death in a strangled kind of breaking screech...well, you'll sit up straight. Moira Shearer, who was in fact a young ballet dancer at Sadlers' Wells and had to be coaxed to take the role, is a gorgeous creature and a first-rate dancer. She carries off the acting requirements very well. With her flaming red hair, she is just a wonder to look at and appreciate.
And then there is The Red Shoes Ballet itself. This was the first time a movie's story line was interrupted for an extended dance piece. The music by Brian Easdale is so memorable that I doubt anyone who hears it will forget the main theme. Powell directed the ballet as a surreal fantasy. It starts on the stage of the theater, then shifts to a stage that was never built in a real theater, then shifts into pure cinema. After The Red Shoes, other musicals suddenly had to have ballets -- An American in Paris, Singin' in the Rain, and on and on -- but none has ever been better than this.
The Red Shoes is a magnificent movie. It deservedly remains one of Powell's and Pressburger's great accomplishments.
The Criterion edition is just about flawless with true color and great clarity. The commentary that accompanies the movie is fascinating.
Rating: 
Summary: a major first for the movies
Review: This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.This film is well known and the first technicolor film about ballet. It is based loosely on the Hans Christian Andersen tale of the same name. In this version, a ballerina with great potential is forced to make a decision between her promising career and her lover. The film has a famous 15 minute ballet sequence that has been adored throughout the ages. The DVD includes the following special features. A slide show of martin scorsese's collection of lobby cards related to the film. Theatrical trailer Slide show of publicity and production photos series of paintings with alternate angle shot that has side by side comparisons between the ballet sequence with the storyboard paintings. a partial Powell & Pressburger filmography with photos and clips of some of their films. (some of which were subsequently released by Criterion Collection full length audio commentary audio of Jeremy Irons reading the Andersen tale and excerpts of film novelization by Powell & Pressburger. The films of Powell & Pressburger have been imitated many times by modern filmmakers and this isno exception. a must for ballet enthusiasts and Criterion fans.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, But a Couple of Problems
Review: When it first came out, it was quite a phenomenon. I enjoyed it at that time and have seen it several times since in theaters and on TV. I don't think the production wears well. Those viewing it now will see hangovers from the practices of the stage and silent movies and early talkies, like exaggerated facial expressions and emotions, and continuous loud talking. I wouldn't use the word "hokey" but perhaps "dated." And there are things like, when we're supposedly watching "The Red Shoes" ballet live, there are unstageable cinematic special effects used (which are hokey). The story written to surround the Andersen tale is unsubtle and not particularly interesting. On the plus side, the dancing is good, and the depictions of the process of staging ballet (or anything) are more complete than usual, although the timing is unrealistic (e. g., a ballet -- while short -- in a couple of weeks). All the different functions needed and the interplay among them were done as well as I've seen in a movie. The sound in this movie has been criticized by other reviewers, and I agree. Imagewise, the specks are not bad, but noticeable. The ones you see are white, which means they are opaque objects on the negative used for the digital scan. In the case notes Criterion makes a point of constructing this negative from the original Technicolor separations (three negatives superimposed through filters (red, green, and blue?) to construct the composite color negative). That means the master negative used is new, and should be clean. If the specks were on the Technicolor separates, they would show up as colored confetti. Another thing was that the overall color was obviously unsteady on my projection set, a phenomenon seen on many movies on TV. This probably comes about because of random variations in emulsion sensitivity along the Technicolor separate films. By 1947 this characteristic of photographic emulsions had not yet been conquered, although I don't remember noticing it on, for example, The Wizard of Oz. There are feasible ways to reduce this within the digital domain, but it would require some kind of manual or automatic frame-by-frame attention, maybe not deemed worth it for this particular movie. But overall I did not find the mechanical flaws particularly important. The overall experience was satisfactory and about what I expected. I'll probably watch it again.
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