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The Red Shoes [DVD] [1948]
 
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The Red Shoes [DVD] [1948]

DVD ~ Marius Goring
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
RRP: £15.99
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  • This item: The Red Shoes [DVD] [1948] DVD ~ Marius Goring

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Product details

  • Actors: Marius Goring, Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Robert Helpmann, Leonide Massine
  • Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
  • Format: PAL
  • Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Number of discs: 2
  • Classification: U
  • Studio: ITV DVD
  • DVD Release Date: 6 Jul 2009
  • Run Time: 128 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B0029KQNWI
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,667 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)

    Popular in this category:

    #43 in  DVD > Classics > Drama

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Reviews

DVD Description

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's most celebrated Technicolor fairy-tale, The Red Shoes is both metaphor and melodrama of unparalleled boldness. So extravagantly theatrical a movie was regarded as simply unreleasable by the Rank Organisation back in 1948, but in spite of their attempted suppression it has long since been acknowledged as one of British cinema's landmark achievements. Not only were Powell and Pressburger unorthodox enough to populate the cast with real ballet dancers (including the radiant Moira Shearer in the pivotal role), they built the whole film around an extraordinarily daring 17-minute ballet sequence in which the camera moves from outside the proscenium arch into a subjective whirl of impressionistic images inspired and informed by Brian Easdale's marvellous score. Only after seeing this, so the story goes, was Gene Kelly able to see how he could make An American in Paris.

The melodramatic plot, metaphorically acted out in the "Red Shoes Ballet" then re-enacted for real by the main characters, presents Great Art as something worth dying for, and, in the person of Anton Walbrook's Lermontov, gives us a portrait of the artist as a man for whom anything and everything is worth sacrificing in its pursuit. Loosely based on Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes, Walbrook's magnetic central performance is of sufficient stature to conceal the rather trite predicament of his ballerina protégée, and the film's contrived, over-the-top tragic ending.

The Red Shoes is widely considered to be one of the greatest films ever made. It's one of the BFI's Top 10 British films and won 2 Oscars. The film has been restored by UCLA Film and Television Archive in association with The British Film Institute, The Film Foundation, ITV Global Entertainment Ltd. and Janus Films. This version of the film was screened at the Cannes Film Festival 2009 in the prestigious Cannes Classic slot and was introduced by Martin Scorsese


Synopsis

This seminal dance film, created Powell and Pressburger, in which an impresario takes a ballerina under his wing, deftly combines interpretive dance with drama. This acclaimed adaption of a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale results in a marked triumph of artistic collaboration and modernity. More than any other film, THE RED SHOES deals with the dangerous, magical process by which art is distilled from preparation and effort.

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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars AT LEAST TEN STARS!, 3 Jul 2009
This newly restored and remastered version is miraculous. Once more we can see the brilliant, jewel-like, fully saturated colours that us oldies remember as typical of the original Technicolor process. The restorers, bless them, have, for once, paid equal attention to the sound, so often forgotten by classic film restorers. In this case, the sound is better than in any previous version, including the original. Even if, like me, you have an existing DVD (or VHS tape) of Red Shoes, I urge you to buy this one - it's not expensive, you will be bowled over by the quality of image and sound and will want to keep it for watching again and again.

This extraordinary movie has been watched all over the world throughout the sixty-one years since it was made. Probably no day passes without it being shown somewhere in the world. I doubt these statements are true of any other movie except, perhaps, 'Casablanca'. Moreover, many of the people that love it don't particularly like ballet. Some actively dislike classical ballet. How can this be?

It is so successful because the directors pull so many of the arts together in one construct, each and all of them to an unsurpassed standard. Composer, musicians, choreographer, dancers, actors, stage designers, painters, lighting designers, studio technicians, cinematographer - all gave of their transcendent best to tell a universally well-loved, traditional folk-tale, related by one of the greatest storytellers of all time and to interpret it as a ten-hankie, love-story movie.

It is invidious to pick individuals out of this magnificent joint effort, but two artists in particular should be noted, as they always get left out, upstaged by the more obvious talents of Walbrook, Shearer and Massine, who each grab your attention whenever they are on screen.

First, and perhaps greatest of the lot, Jack Cardiff for his brilliant, innovative camera-work and Technicolor cinematography, especially because these were the early days of Technicolor and he, a hitherto unknown Brit cameraman, introduced, for the first time, a painterly eye which amazed the American Technicolor specialists. His extraordinary creative and innovative camerawork for the ballet within the film has never been equalled.

Second, Brian Easdale's music never gets proper credit, probably because the Red Shoes' sprightly theme is lifted directly from Elgar's 1901 'Cockaigne' overture. The music is no worse for that, as Easdale creates his own evocative variations with brilliant development and orchestration, precisely reflecting the style typical of contemporary English ballet music in the middle of the 20th century. Exciting, emotional, highly rhythmic, eminently danceable ballet music, perfectly interpreting the subject.

Moira Shearer (a prima ballerina at the peak of her powers on the classical ballet stage at the time) was famed for the unrivalled precision of her dancing. She not only entrances us with her blazing talent and the ravishing beauty of her gorgeous combination of red hair and creamy skin, but shows that she is no mean actor. At a (much) lower level, she reduces males to blubber with the shot of her pert bottom in little black dance shorts as she walks towards the exercise barre. Wow!

The somewhat dismissive Amazon review, to my mind, misses the whole point of the story. The ballerina's predicament is anything but "trite". The conflict between the demands of career and relationship is something most of us experience in our everyday lives and a satisfactory solution to the dilemma is impossible for talented and dedicated artists, for whom life is their art. The ending may be "over-the-top" in real life, but this is ART - a legend - for heaven's sake. Like a Greek tragedy, it deliberately uses catastrophe to highlight the misery that results from attempts to resolve the dilemma.

This is without doubt the best movie about ballet ever made and by any standard one of the best movies of all time. Even if you do not like ballet, you must see it once. If you like ballet, I promise you will see it many times.

I saw Red Shoes when it first came out in 1948, when I was a boy of sixteen and head-over-heels in love with my own real-life, beautiful ballet dancer. Which is, of course, why I have seen it several times a year ever since, will continue to watch it until I make my own final exit, stage right, and will never accept any criticism of it whatsoever. And that driven bastard Lermontov is, unfortunately, only too right when he says in the movie - "NOTHING..matters..but..the..music." As I was to learn the hard way, emotions are only too transitory, while art lives for ever. The human drama of how this plays out in the story of the Red Shoes is what makes it a great film. No great art gets made without enormous sacrifice. Ever.

Since writing a rave review of this film several years ago I have recently read that Martin Scorsese claims 'The Red Shoes' to have been his most powerful cinematic influence and that he recognises some part of its influence every day. I confess to a rosy glow of insufferable self-satisfaction when I first read this - "I told you so!". In more humble moments, I am proud to share the opinion of the greatest movie director of our time.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Incandescent, 31 Jul 2009
By Michael Wailes (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Not sure what I can add to the exemplary review above by pfvll.

A truly great film done the honour of a truly sensational restoration. I studied and admired the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in the early nineties at a time when they were beginning to receive the recognition they deserved after years of neglect. I have to say I loved the look of the film then, but seeing it now with this brilliant restoration it gains so much texture and depth that really I have to take my hat off to the vision of everyone concerned, not only Powell, Pressburger and the cast, but Jack Cardiff and Hein Heckroth whose reputations gain most here.

Looks amazing on DVD, but I can't wait to check it out theatrically when it is reissued in December (and no, I don't work for the distributor - when you see the DVD you'll know what I mean).
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars DVD Rd Shoes, 5 Aug 2009
By B. R. Baker (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
DVD was in very good condition - very pleased with my purchase. All my transactions with/via Amazon have ben most satisfactory.
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