The Red Shoes (1948) - Michael Powell/ Emeric Pressburger
What would you give up to create art? What would you sacrifice to pursue your passions? How far would you go to be a truly complete person? This is the dilemma that The Red Shoes dramatizes through the character of Vicky, played by Moira Shearer. Inspired by a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, the film depicts a young dancer who is torn between a quiet, contented life with her loving husband, or pursuing her great passion of ballet dancing. The power of The Red Shoes is that co-creators Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger make you feel that dilemma. We understand just why she is torn because the filmmakers expertly place you in the head of Vicky when she dances, allowing us to feel the same rush of excitement and fervor that the character does. In a long, bravura set piece, Powell/Pressburger show a staging of the play-within-the-film version of The Red Shoes. To Vicky, this isnt just a dance recital. The walls of reality come down, and she is transported into a stream-of-conscious epic in which the staging, the music, the story and her own life blend into a hallucinogenic vision. Its exhilarating and terrifying. All this makes the ending both heartbreaking and inevitable. The audience wants so badly for Vicky to find peace and happiness (not least of all because Shearer is almost unbearably sympathetic) but it quickly becomes clear that there is no peace possible for someone in this position. Powell and Pressburgers great achievement is connecting this push-pull to not just dance, but to all art and artists, including anyone in the audience. And it is their refusal to give any relief, or offer any middle ground that makes the conclusion so crushing, and marks the film as a horror classic. By the time Vicky coos, Darling, take off the red shoes, youre almost just glad shes finally stopped. Too bad it took dying to get there. MOST HORROR MOMENT: What begins as a gaudy musical number rapidly shifts into a surrealistic, post-apocalyptic hellscape. The most badass ballet sequence until Black Swan.
Brendan Foley is a pop-culture omnivore which is a nice way of saying he has no taste. He has a passion for genre movies, TV shows, books and any and all media built around short people with hairy feet and magic rings. He has a Bachelor's degree in Journalism and Writing, which is a very nice way of saying that he's broke. You can follow/talk to/yell at him on Twitter at @TheTrueBrendanF.
