The Red Shoes

The young dancer Victoria Page becomes a star under Lermontov, who runs a ballet company, then falls in love with a composer, and Lermontov forces her to choose. At the centre sits a seventeen-minute ballet sequence. Powell and Pressburger built it not as a record of a stage performance but out of editing, close-ups and effects. Art director Hein Heckroth explained the aim: to make it subjective as well as objective, showing the dancer's inner state through visual metaphor. The debt to German Expressionism is plain. Moira Shearer was a real ballerina and turned the part down at first, afraid film would damage her dancing career and finding the script's portrayal of ballet unconvincing. When tests with other candidates failed, Powell kept pressing and she accepted with her company's blessing. It was barely released properly in Britain. The Rank Organisation, weakened financially by other productions, gave it almost no promotion. In America it ran continuously for more than two years at New York's Bijou Theatre and became the first British film to take over 5 million dollars in US rentals. It took five Academy Award nominations, winning for Brian Easdale's original score and for art direction. Who it is for: viewers interested in colour and in where ballet meets cinema. Who it is not for: anyone who will find the melodrama too cruel. The ending is still argued about.