Movie Review The Red Shoes

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Spoiler alerts – 1948 There are really only two great movies about ballet, Black Swan and The Red Shoes. The Pressburger & Powell movie, starring Moira Shearer in her first movie, tells the tragic story of a young dancer torn between love and the disciplines of her dance training. Her story runs parallel to the very story she is involved in The Red Shoes, based on the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale. It tells of a demonic shoe maker who manipulates a dancer into wearing shoes that never let her stop dancing. She dances her way away from the arms of her true love, through relationships with other men and through Hell from one side to the other before dying of exhaustion as a priest takes the shoes off her feet. The dancer herself dances to her shocking suicide in the movie. The dance sequences are brilliant, especially the full uncut Red Shoes ballet staging in the centre of the movie, with a score specially composed by Brian Easdale, and Leonide Masside choreographing his own work as the demonic shoe-seller. The final moment of the ballet as he holds the shoes out to the audience as if waiting for his next victim to come forward is very creepy. The central dance is set to music by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Thomas Beecham. It is a film in itself within the main film. The closing line of the movie as the death of the star is announced to the audience is very moving, as the cast start to perform the dance as if she was still there, with her part represented by an empty spotlight. The movie has inspired many works since, most notably Kate Bush’s fabulous 1983 concept album, The Red Shoes, with its videos linked into a movie called The Line, The Cross And The Curve. The songs echo the movie and the original fairy tale too. Youtube Kate Bush – The Red Shoes Arthur Chappell