Exclusive“The Red Shoes” (1948): Art, Ambition, and the Price of Perfection

I wonder if I stand any chance of being chosen for tour this year. It's anybody's guess. No one knows what he's going to do. Oh, you have nothing to worry about. He's certain to choose an excellent dancer like you. In the beginning I would have thought so too, but I've been here for weeks and he hasn't looked at me once. I don't know what's the matter with that man. How can he keep overlooking a dancer as good as you are? Maybe he doesn't think I'm so good. Well, Borat Skaia is leaving and he'll need someone to take her place, especially because he's writing a new ballet. I doubt that will concern me. But just think of it, Vicky. It could be you. I don't know. He won't let just anyone put on the red shoes. I'm Tiffany Brannan. I'm Rebecca Brannan. Welcome to Real Thoughts on Cinema. My dance teacher once said that he considers Black Swan to be the greatest ballet film of all time. When I argued that The Red Shoes was a contender for that title, he replied that it was like play acting compared to the later film. I think a lot of people similarly discredit classic films because they assume that the movie industry has evolved in terms of drama as well as technology. However, classic films are actually more realistic because they don't rely on over-the-top special effects or a lot of hype. That's true. Because of its realistic depiction of ballet and the struggles that dancers face, we think that the most realistic ballet movie is The Red Shoes from 1948. This film follows the parallel destinies of a young ballerina, Victoria Page, and a young composer, Julian Craster, as they both go to work for Boris Lermontov at the Ballet Lermontov. Vicky quickly becomes Lermontov's muse and with Julian writing the score, he writes a ballet around her, The Red Shoes, based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale. However, life soon starts to imitate art as Victoria and Julian fall in love and Lermontov is very jealous. When they get married and leave the company, Vicky feels the pull of The Red Shoes just as the girl in the story does. This was a British film produced by Archer Pictures and distributed by General Film Distribution. Eventually, it was released in the United States by Universal Pictures. It was written, directed, and produced by the dynamic duo of Michael Powell and Emmerich Pressburger. The movie starred Moira Shearer, Marius Goring, and Anton Walbrook. We've claimed, a rather bold claim, that this film is realistic and I think a lot of people looking at it would find that kind of a surprising claim. Yes, because it is very dramatic, very symbolic, very metaphorical. Really a true melodrama with the sort of Phantom of the Opera-esque dynamic between the ballet director and his muse and the young composer. But the reason that there are so many over-the-top stories like that is because it happens in real life and especially in the performing arts. Yes. Directors are the last kind of feudal lord that's in our Western world today, particularly in ballet because of the way that the ballet industry still is. That there are these companies with all these dancers who have to go in and take class every day. They're assigned these roles. There really is no other performing arts industry where people who are that level of stars are that much just employees. Opera singers get to decide what they're going to do, but ballet dancers are still under the tyrannical control of evil directors, if that is the case. And there is a tyrant in charge, as exemplified in some stories. But it was very important to the production team that they have real dancers in this movie. And that was because they really wanted to capture that atmosphere of a ballet company. So they sort of created their own little ballet company in the movie using a lot of dancers from the Sadler's Wells Ballet, which eventually became the Royal Ballet that we know today. Would you say that was one of the top ballet companies in the world at the time? Absolutely. The English school of ballet was very widely respected. Interestingly, this film was made just the year before Sadler's Wells made its first trip to America. So when this film was released in America, it was American audiences' first experience with that sort of very special kind of English-trained ballet, because of course we didn't have what we have now. There are these beautiful filmed productions from the Royal Ballet that you can see anywhere. That wasn't the case then. And there really wasn't that much professional ballet in the United States yet. It was just getting started in the 40s. George Balanchine, who sort of started ballet in America, was starting in the mid-40s. He was just starting to get into the fold. He was just beginning. So yes, ballet was somewhat new to American audiences. An occasional tour of a European company, a few random schools, but it wasn't what it is now. There wasn't a Nutcracker on every corner, nor a ballet studio in every mall and shopping center. And as we've mentioned, there were so many movies that featured great music and even great classical singing. A lot of opera movies. There were not a lot of ballet films, and I think this one still is very unique. Yes. The main real dancers who are featured in it are, of course, Moira Shearer playing not only a dancing role, but a dramatic acting role as the leading lady of the film. There are some other noteworthy dancers in the cast, too. I think second would probably be Robert Helpman. Yes, playing the main danseur in the company, so basically sort of typecasting, but he's supposed to be Russian. Yes, it's interesting how he's sort of playing into a stereotype of the ballet man. And if you read about him, he really was not that much like that. But he's playing very much just a sort of stuck-up ballet man. Not a huge acting role, but you really get to see his great dancing and particularly his wonderful partnering, because he was such a great partner. And his choreography, right? That's right. He did basically all the ballet except that danced by Leonid Massin, who was another great dancer and actor in this. I actually think he has a much bigger acting role. Well, he was really more of a choreographer than a dancer. He was a very well-respected choreographer at the time. He had choreographed a couple of pieces for the Sadler's Wells. I'm sure that was the tie-in to this film. So he really is playing himself, because he's playing the choreographer. And the ballet master. And the ballet master, Grisha. And he dances a few character parts, like the evil shoemaker in The Red Shoes and Dr. Coppelius in Coppelia. It is interesting that Robert Helpman was given the assignment of doing the choreography for the film when they had Leonid Massin, who was more regarded as a choreographer at the time. But I think it's really wonderful that they did, because he's the one dancing a lot of it, so he really gets to impart his style into it. And then in a more supporting role, the only other featured female dancer is the reigning prima ballerina when Victoria first joins the company. Her name is Boronskaya. She was played by Lyudmila Cherina, who, despite the extremely Russian name, was a French ballerina. I honestly think that's what her character is supposed to be, too, because she's speaking French in the beginning of the film. I actually think that's the case with many of these characters here. They're playing to be Russian, but I think they're actually supposed to be French. Because that was the culture at the time. Everybody had to be Russian, so a lot of people took on Russian names. What really ties the whole thing together is the fact that the two main male leads aren't dancers for the contrast. You have this one very well-regarded British actor, Maurice Goering, playing the young love interest, and then the dynamic Austrian actor, Anton Walbrook, playing Lermontov, doing sort of a mix between French and Russian with his accent. And he gives such a powerful performance, really embodying what that kind of person is. Now, looking at this movie, it's very different from the kind of films we usually discuss from the same era, because this is the first movie we've discussed that really is fully a British production. That's right. And although it's from our main era of focus, 1934 to 1954, it is not a Code film or a Breen era film, because it was a British production. And that's an interesting, deeper form of knowledge if you really know about Hollywood history or the motion picture industry at large. And it kind of goes along with the whole idea that, was it just the good old days, or were there reasons that movies were the way they were? And foreign films very much show that it wasn't just the good old days, this was a set of standards that America had adopted through the Motion Picture Production Code, as enforced by the Production Code Administration under Joseph Breen. But foreign films, like Red Shoes, could be released in America, and sometimes they would cut a couple of scenes and then give it a seal of approval. But the thing that made American films have such a high level of decency and propriety and just feel-good cleanness, even if it wasn't happily ever after, was the fact that the PCA worked with them throughout the process so that no censorship was needed. They would not make a scene that would have to be cut eventually. So to look at British films from exactly the same time period, you see just how different Hollywood standards work. How do you think that The Red Shoes really stands out as being a British film? Well, this isn't a morality issue, but the first thing is the quality of the colour. Even though it is three-strip technicolour, it's just somehow the way they used the lighting. This film particularly is noted for using colour in a very distinct way, and I think that's noticeable. But from having seen some other British films, a couple of them in colour, they're very pale. It's the way the actors look, and that might be something with makeup, it might be the quality of the colour, it's hard to pinpoint what it is. Like Vivian Leigh in an American technicolour film like Gone with the Wind, versus a British technicolour film like Caesar and Cleopatra. She's fair, but she's so white in Caesar and Cleopatra. And you see a similar look with Moira Shearer, who actually looks a lot like Vivian Leigh. She was noted as looking like a red-headed Vivian Leigh, and the first time I saw just a shot of her face from this movie, I thought it was Vivian Leigh with red hair. Of course, when you see more of her in action, you can see she has a very different look. She was Scottish, and really regarded as being quite a beauty, because that's not always that important in the ballet world, just your face being beautiful. And supposedly Stuart Granger, the noted British actor, was the first one to suggest to the producers that they look at her for this part. Because I believe it was originally written actually as a vehicle for Meryl Oberon, a great American actress. Her husband came up with the idea for her, and then because of the war and complications that didn't work out, so then in 1946, Powell and Pressburger bought the story from him, and then they really were set on that they wanted it to be a real dancer. Yes. And it took them nine months to talk Marcia into doing the part, because I asked her and she didn't want to do it, because there was a sort of stigma amongst the dancers, like oh, if you go to Hollywood, that's cheap, that's not high art, and she was just getting started at Sadler's Wells, really starting to get good parts, and she didn't want to damage her position there. So she thought Nanette de Valois, the director of the company, would appreciate her standing firm. But then one day she called her up to her office and she said, Cher, will you just do it already and get this man out of our hair, because he was hanging around the theatre and wouldn't leave her alone, so she agreed to do it. I think that some of the added realism is because it's a British film. There are certain things that, when you see movies from the same era that are from Hollywood that show the dance industry, the dancers always look a little nicer, they're wearing more clothes, all with the same look, more uniform, because it really is very realistic down to the fact that it's like, oh, they're really not wearing enough clothes there. Many times you see, particularly Moira Shearer wearing a leotard without a skirt or pants or anything over it. It's quite high-cut. At one point she's got a shirt kind of tied up so that her midriff is partly showing, and I'm pretty sure in that scene a lot of them are wearing bathing suits. Because they're on the Riviera at that point and it's hot. So that is another reason why, not to discredit American films of that time, of course, I prefer them, but as we're comparing it with a very modern film like Black Swan, those little extra touches of grittiness or realism that British films could have at the time make it more comparable to a modern film when there are no restraints on anything. Yeah, absolutely. The look, of course, is very different than you would see from dancers in class now. But there is a sort of perception, and I think there always have been, we see ballerinas on stage in the beautiful costumes and people kind of imagine, oh, that's what they always look like. And then you see ballerinas in class and you're like, wow, they look terrible. And of course, all of fashion has gotten sloppier now, so ballerinas aren't exactly wearing sweats in this movie. But it's definitely a bit more haphazard and just not always just perfectly put together. And I honestly wonder if maybe each of the dancers brought a bit of his or her own style into that class wear look. My outfit is based on the costume which we see Borinskaya wearing the first day we see her in rehearsal. It's black tights with a black leotard with puffy sleeves, a black skirt, and her hair is tied up in a blue scarf. And of course, she's wearing black pointe shoes. My outfit is inspired by the rehearsal outfit which Vicky wears at the final rehearsal for the Red Shoes, with a wrapped top, black pants, a blue rehearsal tutu, and of course, the signature red shoes. The defining moment of this film is the Red Shoes ballet. How long is it? About 15 minutes, between 15 and 16. And it most notably inspired the famous American in Paris ballet sequence. Dream Kelly saw this film and loved it. The first time that a whole ballet sequence was in a movie. That's right, it was the first original ballet written for film. And we just had this interesting thought the other day after watching it again. Maybe it's the reason that there is a lot of trick photography in it, or even odd passages of time, is that they're representing it's more like a two-hour ballet, and this is just consolidating it. Because I suddenly was thinking, everybody came out to that theater to watch a 15-minute ballet? I feel like they would have to be on a triple bill or something. But I think that, and you pointed that out, and I think that might be the case. They're showing us an overview of the ballet. When there are abrupt fades that you couldn't possibly do on stage. And there is some kind of movie magic in the filming of this. People turning into other things, jumping into shoes, visualizations. But re-watching it, we thought, maybe that isn't so much exactly what is happening on stage, but a rather philosophical representation of what the audience is seeing because of Julian's music and the expressiveness of the dancing. What Lermontov is seeing, what Vicky is seeing in her own mind as she's dancing. I think there's a lot of blurring of the lines of reality there, and I think that is what makes the sequence so impacting. People have commented on that, that it was so important for this sequence as the centerpiece of the film to be a work of art in itself, rather than just, we're going to show you exactly what's happening on stage. So even though sometimes I have a moment where I'm just thinking, you really couldn't do that on stage, I think I really had a deep appreciation for it the last time I watched it, that they're really just showing not only this ballet, but each of the people involved in its perception of the ballet. The music is amazing. It's very modern classical, sort of in the style of Prokofiev, who was writing a lot of ballets in the 40s, so very current. It has beautiful moments. It has some dissonant moments. It has moments that are almost a little like Gershwin. It really reflects what's happening visually, and vice versa. Julian references that in an earlier scene. He says, at this moment, when your partner lifts you into the air, you'll be transformed into a cloud or a bird or a flower. So they do that visually at that moment of transferring the pastel paintings of those different shapes. Or a part where he says, this is the ballroom sequence, and she says, that's been cut. It's been cut from the ballet, but it's still in my score. I wrote this to be a ballroom scene, the audience will see a ballroom scene. So I think that brief moment when you see the candlelit hall and the couples dancing, that might not actually be happening. That's what Julian was creating. Of course, the Red Shoes ballet is not the only dancing which you see in the film. There are a few clips from existing classical ballets, like a notable scene that's an excerpt from Swan Lake, in a tiny theater, in a rainy afternoon, when Vicky is dancing just to a phonograph. And she looks out at the audience and she sees that Lermontov is sitting there. And it's the moment when he really sees and recognizes her talent, and she knows it. She requested to do a guest performance with this smaller company, so it's the first time she's away from the ballet Lermontov since joining. And when she's there, even though he handpicked her, he doesn't even look at her. But then he comes to see her there, and they use this amazing camera effect of showing from her point of view, the room spinning as she's doing her turns. Which is a film technique that Martin Scorsese notably borrowed in a film, because he just loved this film passionately and has a lot of memorabilia from it. Huh, interesting. Does he have the red shoes? He does have a pair of the red shoes, yeah. Or more than one pair, of course. It's kind of an iconic scene when Lermontov is walking by this long row of red pointe shoes, and he chooses this one. I love the use of colored pointe shoes in this movie. That's something you see in a lot of American ballet films. Basically if there are pointe shoes, they're going to be colored. Because why wouldn't you? Would you venture to say that maybe they did that a little more in live ballet at the time? Oh, that's a really good question. It's hard to say because there's not as much documentation, and a lot of it's in black and white. Now you could still tell if you really studied. I think that's something that they really like to do in movies more frequently than it's ever been done in actual ballet. Yes. But it's definitely something that you see, and they had the budget and the wherewithal to make them colored pointe shoes from that colored satin. But it's part of the whole mystique of ballet is the pointe shoes. And I don't think this movie gets into too much like how short-lived they are or some of the other challenges of them, but the certain magic that those pointe shoes have, that's definitely captured in it. There's a fascinating kind of candid moment that almost seems like it wasn't scripted to happen, but it's hard to say. When they're in the final rehearsal for the red shoes, and I think it says on the Bolton board that it's a dress rehearsal, but Vicky's just in sort of semi-practice wear. She has the red shoes on. And right at the beginning of the clip, she's dancing, and then she stops, and she's like hopping on one foot, tugging the heel of her shoe back on. That's such a real thing that you see a lot of ballerinas struggle with that, the shoe can slip off. And it's just sort of randomly thrown in there. I don't know if they did that intentionally, or she just was having a technical malfunction, and they said, oh, leave it in. But I think that's brilliant that they left that in, if that was unintentional. Or if it was intentional, that was good thinking on someone's part. It's interesting looking at the dance styles of this movie from a modern ballet perspective. Anyone who's very familiar with ballet of today will notice that there's some different technical styles. For instance, in especially the very opening ballet you see in that first ballet, that isn't really that important in and of itself. It's just more of a plot device to get Julian involved with the company. But you see Borenskaja dancing, and she couldn't get into any professional ballet company, at least a good one, with the level of technique she's using there. And even her body, she's a little more voluptuous than we think of ballerinas being. Yes. Like we said, of course, this was before Balanchine, and he was the one who really brought in the skinny look for ballerinas. Before that, it was more athletic and muscular, was the look for ballerinas. Moira is thin, very thin, especially in her upper body, but her legs are strong. I love to watch Moira Scherer because I think that's not true of her. I think she could easily get into any good ballet company now. She really could hold her own against a modern ballerina. Because I think some of the things that really stand out and almost look like bad technique are maybe being less over the box of the pointe shoe, which is partly because pointe shoes were constructed a bit differently than they were to sold. Look at how tapered the toe is. So it was much harder. Not being as turned out, not being as high on demi-pointe when stepping between. Even the crossing over. Yeah. Cross the position. Of course, that's still more common in Russian ballet, particularly. Just not having the extensions as high. But when you look at her, you can see she is choosing to do, shall I say, a more decorous arabesque line with the leg lower because that was, especially in the English school, I think that was the style of the day. Not that she couldn't put her leg higher if she wanted to. Because in other moments, you can tell just from the way she's moving, she has a lot of extensions. She could easily put her leg higher. She's choosing that too. Very stylistic, but it's very controlled and she's an amazing dancer. Yes. The articulation of her feet is beautiful. They do a lot of close-ups on her feet in the red shoes and she is just very, very clean and very precise. But it's really interesting to get this up-close-and-personal look at ballet of the 1940s because there are some films, but they weren't doing HD broadcasts then. That's right. I mean, there were recordings of Margot Fonteyn from the 60s for television that looked like they were filmed in 1910 because they're so blurry. So to have something this vivid and close-up expression, you can see the perspiration on her forehead. You see everything. And that's something that you can barely even see from the front row of the theatre. So it's very valuable to have movies like this that capture the artistry of these people who are now long dead, but to see what they did in their heyday because ballet is a pretty young art form in its modern sense compared to opera, for instance. It's changed so much in the last 180, 60 years. So to see the not-too-distant roots, it's very interesting and very informative as either a dancer, a choreographer, or a ballet fan. And coming back to the Black Swan comparison, not to get into the whole controversy of that too much, but just with what I know of that film, just from kind of hearing about it and reading about it, it seems like they got so caught up in that it's a horror film. They're just leaning into so many of the tropes and even misconceptions people have of ballet that get so much like her feet are all bloody after she takes off her pointe shoes or that This obsession with being perfect is driving her out of her mind. And even though this film ends tragically, Red Shoes, I think it's a very respectful depiction of the ballerina's psyche, shall we say. It's not just the insane ballerina. I think she's written very nicely and you really feel for her, you root for her, and you really understand the complexity of what she's going through without getting into too many of the things, the misconceptions and preconceptions people will have about ballet. It's a story about an artist who is torn between wanting to have this career that she spent her whole life training to have, and the art which she loves so much, and love for a man when that begins challenging this art that she's pursued so much. I don't personally believe that it's true that you have to choose between having a career or having a fulfilling personal life or a romantic life. But I don't think this film is necessarily saying that is absolutely the case. With these particular two men, that is the case. Lermontov believes you have to completely devote yourself to your art. And there are a lot of people who feel that way, particularly there are directors who are like that. This character was very much inspired by Sergei Diaghilev, who was the founder of the Ballet Russe and his relationship with Nijinsky. When Nijinsky married a ballerina, he fired them both. Yeah, so it's not just you can't make it work, because Moira Shearer was actually married in real life and she had a very happy life. But it's showing that it's not about you can't make it both work. It's about the story of really a woman who's destroyed by these two men who are very selfish about her. Each one just wants something from her and ultimately doesn't care enough about her. They both love her, but not enough. It's a selfish love and they ultimately are tearing her apart. They both know that she's both an artist and a woman, but Lermontov only wants her to be an artist and Julian only wants her to be a woman, even though she was a ballerina. They met and fell in love with her being the star in the Red Shoes. And he tries to say, oh, you could dance anywhere else but here. But this is the place where she created that role. And Lermontov is telling her no one has danced the Red Shoes since you left. But that's real, you know, that's the real stuff that anyone who is a performer, I think, could relate to. And if you're not, I think maybe you'll get a little more understanding of what performers go through. I'm glad that they didn't do too many of the stereotypes, like you say, in the 1940s movie, partly because a lot of those stereotypes didn't exist as much. People just didn't know as much about ballet or it wasn't the case. You see the dancers eating a lot more than people would think dancers do. It's not really true. Dancers eat. But because they're real dancers, they're disciplined. You know, at one point, the choreographer says to Boriska, oh, now you can eat candy all day, eat sweets all day. She clearly has been eating something because, like I said, she is very full of sweats. But she's strong. She's healthy. She's not overweight. She's not underweight. She's not as athletic as Moira Shearer. Which is partly her body type and her technique. This isn't as good. But you see them being disciplined, but being real people. And you see the struggles. But they don't make it all about it. Because people who don't know about ballet just want to think, oh, your feet are all bloody and you can't walk and you can't eat. They just want to focus on those things because they don't understand. So I appreciate that Powell and Pressburger didn't capitalize on the more controversial or sensationalist aspects of the profession. And instead, they really wanted it to be about the beauty of the art form as well as the tragedy that can come along with any art form or any time when you're torn between two different sides. And it's a powerful love triangle and a very compelling story. It would seem, as we've been talking about how ballet-centered obviously this film is, that maybe you have to be either a dancer or a balletomane to really love it. But I think it was done in such an artistic and such an exciting and dramatic way that if you don't know anything about ballet, I think you could really appreciate this movie. I think it will make you want to know more about ballet. I think it could kind of whet your appetite or pique your interest. You'll want to go and maybe see a ballet or find video of it because it really just gives you enough, a little taste of it. And then the behind-the-scenes drama that I think it could really be enticing to people to discover more about this wonderful art form. Or if you're a performer, if you're a dancer, if you already really love it, it's going to feel relatable and just really remind you of why you love the art form so much. As we mentioned, movies like Black Swan no longer have that kind of artistry or integrity or even good storytelling. But the beautiful thing is that live arts, such as ballet and opera, are often still performed in a more traditional manner. So I highly encourage that if you are inspired by this movie, you try to find a live performance near you of a classical ballet. Something like Swan Lake or Coppelia like you see in this movie. Or maybe a work like Romeo and Juliet or Cinderella that was choreographed and came from this era of the Sadler's Wells. But in terms of movies, this film is widely available in beautifully remastered copies. You can find it for free on many streaming services like Tubi and some other more niche ones like the Internet Archive. Or you can also rent or purchase it on YouTube or Amazon Prime Video. It's also available on DVD. Many films from the late 1940s onward deal with the difficult problem of World War II soldiers returning home and trying to readjust to civilian life. Join us next time as we discuss a unique romantic comedy all about one soldier's struggle with an unusual and undeniably humorous condition caused by a unique combat accident. Thank you for watching. Goodbye.