Red Shoes Diary

I might have mentioned that I have never watched The Red Shoes (1948), but I'm now getting into the Powell/Pressburger oeuvre, and it is time. Since it includes a curse and the devil, I guess it's an October horror movie, right?

It starts with a ballet performance, but not a genteel stuffy performance. The music students and other fans waiting in line for the cheap seats nearly trample the guards to get in. Marius Goring is attending because his professor wrote the score - or did he? Because it sounds like he stole it from one of Goring's student projects. But he isn't really the protagonist.

The next day, Goring goes to the ballet's impressario, Anton  Walbrook, to get back a letter he sent about the plagiarism of his work. Walbrook understands what is going on, but convince Goring to keep quiet, and also offers him work as rehearsal director. (Also, he looks very Barrymore.)

Walbrook goes to a society party to mingle, but it's actually because Moira Shearer's mother is trying to get him to see her daughter dance. He doesn't like this, and it looks like Shearer won't be the protagonist. But finally, he sees Shearer in a performance, and decides to make her his star. He gets Goring to work on a ballet based on the fairy tale, The Red Shoes. Of course, Shearer and Goring fall in love, and of course, Walbrook wants Shearer for his own. That's the romantic triangle and now we see the picture.

The story is simple enough - girl must decide between sleazy but powerful impresario or noble but poor composer. To amp it up, the sleazy guy actually brings out her best art, while the composer wants her to quit working (of course). And, as in so many Powell/Pressburger movies, it ends with a fall from a great height.

But even if the story is simple, it is not told that way. It is full of interest and incident. Walbrook, as the devil-surrogate, is of course the most interesting. Goring is a bit of a zero, but Shearer is rather affecting, possibly because she was a real ballerina, more than an actor.

The music and dance are the best part, but there's less of both than you might expect.

In conclusion, I don't think that, if I had seen this as a young girl, it would have inspired me to become a ballerina.