(1948) There are some films, and this is one of them for me, revisiting (more than 30 years later) only spoils the initial, magical impression. Directed, written, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (who co-wrote the screenplay), inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale, with score composed, arranged, and conducted by Brian Easdale, and choreography by Robert Helpmann (who also plays the role of Ivan Boleslawsky), the story of an impresario, Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), who wants to create from human flesh, Victoria Page (Moira Shearer), the greatest ballerina ever, while she eventually regards him as "a gifted, cruel monster," shares thematic elements with Phantom of the Opera.

In the balcony at Covent Garden in London, among the crowd of raucous students come to hear their professor, Andrew Palmer (Austin Trevor), conduct the score of his ballet, Heart of Fire, Julian Craster (Marius Goring), a young composer, recognizes his own work in the performance.

At Lady Nestor's home, during a reception for Lermontov, the hostess (Irene Browne) intends to have her niece, Vicky, dance an exhibition; but Boris ("attractive brute"), who treats ballet as his religion, will have nothing to do with such auditioning.

Interrupting Lermontov's breakfast, Julian requests the return of a letter he'd hastily written the night before about the theft of his music, which Boris has already read; before offering the young man the job of coaching the orchestra, Lermontov consoles Julian, saying it is better to have been the victim of artistic theft than to have been the one so unfortunate as having had to steal.

Invited to rehearsals of Heart of Fire, red-headed Vicky practices under taskmaster Grischa Ljubov (Leonide Massine) with the Lermontov Ballet, earning a spot with the troupe on its way to perform in Paris. When prima donna Irina Boronskaja (Lumilla Tcherina) decides to leave the ballet to marry - Lermontov refers to her as an "imbecile" because an artist must be willing to give one's life entirely to one's ambition to become great - he gives Vicky the principal part in The Red Shoes. But first the original score by Felipe Betram requires a complete rewrite, a task he assigns to Julian, who eagerly takes advantage of the opportunity.

Speaking with Vicky at night, Julian muses: "I wonder what it feels like to wake up one morning and find yourself famous." Both soon wake up to discover the sensation, but first Lermontov exhorts Vicky to apply herself with unceasing effort and agony to create the appearance of ease and simplicity in her performance while demanding Julian's playing the score on the piano for her everywhere ("My music will transform you") to suffuse her feeling for it.

We see the ballet through Vicky's eyes: a shoemaker (Ljubov) offers a girl a pair of red ballet slippers with which she dances through a carnival of streets into a fiendish/hellish scene before arriving at a grand ballroom - though she's exhausted, her shoes continue dancing - until she dies, a weary waif, in the arms of a priest (played by Boleslawsky).

"I believed in you from the very beginning," Lermontov praises Vicky, wanting to make her into a supreme international sensation: "What do you want from life?" "To dance," she answers, yet following a whirlwind world tour, performing in various ballets, she and Julian fall in love.

Autocratic and jealous, Lermontov reprimands his star, telling her she's not likely to achieve greatness with distractions of "adolescent nonsense." He then dismisses Julian's latest score, though Ljubov thinks it's "brilliant," and the composer from his organization for ingratitude and disloyalty. The sage, elderly Sergei Ratov (Albert Basserman), in charge of stage décor, says he's never before seen Boris behave like this. Vicky protests: "But if Julian goes, I shall go too."

Relenting on his initial decision to deny her release from her contract, he instead withholds permission for her or Julian to perform The Red Shoes. After his rebels have deserted him, Lermontov recalls Irina to his ballet. By chance and some while later Lermontov encounters Vicky at a train station on her way to visit her aunt; he asks her if Julian would have been willing to give up his composing an opera for her as she has sacrificed performing onstage (though not the grueling discipline of practicing dancing) for him. Under his spell, she once again agrees to dance the lead in The Red Shoes in Paris on the same night Julian is to conduct the debut of his opera in London.

At least once I recommend anyone with an appreciation for romantic cinema to experience the magical moment of this movie, which Powell and Pressburger later novelized.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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