Special Exhibit: THE RED SHOES

Year: 1948

Duration: 133 minutes

Where to watch: Amazon Prime, HBO Max.

“You’ve got to see The Red Shoes. It’s one of the greatest films about art and obsession.”

“Uhm. Sounds familiar.”

“You might have watched it, then. It’s the one about ballet, where thigs start to become surreal as…”

“Oh! You mean that one… But you’re mistaken. That’s not the name. It’s called Black Swan, with Natalie Portman, and it has a scene where…”

“No, no, no. Not the Aronofsky thing. I mean The Red Shoes, directed by prominent British duo Powell and Pressburger.”

“Who?”

…

I’ve had variants of this conversation about three times in my life, when I’ve mentioned my admiration for this drama -almost a psychological thriller- which is loosely based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale.

It revolves around a young dancer and a composer who fall in love and marry, but the relationship is threatened by the obsessive efforts of the girl to become a prima ballerina. This transforms into a sort of love triangle when the company’s owner gets more and more fixated with her.

The peak of the main characters’ careers is the development of a new performance, The Ballet of the Red Shoes, which has an ambiguous supernatural element to it: the eponymous shoes might have really gained influence over the young dancer, or maybe her own mind is playing tricks.

This leads to an increasingly fantastical, surrealistic depiction of her world which has gone to influence many later works. Indeed, what makes the picture so great is not so much the plot, but the execution by the talented filmmaking partners. The movie includes long (and I mean long) sequences of ballet that are visually rich and charged with connotation. I’ve never enjoyed ballet, but these sequences are something to behold, thanks to the virtuoso mise en scène.

It’s also relevant because it's one of the best Technicolor films ever captured on celluloid, and it’s one you should watch in the best possible quality and biggest screen you can. Seriously, every frame is gorgeous, even those that simply feature protagonist Moira Shearer with her vibrant red hair.

The perfect thing is that the beauty of the images becomes almost unbearable, to the point it supports the inner world of the dancer losing her mind. If graphic sex and CGI swan hallucinations aren’t your thing, this is the ballet film for you.