The Red Shoes (Powell and Pressburger, 1948)

Seeing a lot of great films is nothing new to me. I attempt to watch as many good films as possible, which tends to make my choices about what films to see quite picky. I don’t mind spending time watching an average film, but I always prefer to watch something good that will give me more knowledge of cinema. But every once in a while, I see a film that is beyond great, a film that truly captures my senses and creates vivid images that convey meaning in a simple yet intricate way. The more you see film the less impressed you will get by watching new films, because you will come to a point where most films you see you can say “I’ve seen this before”, even though the film might be quite good. This is one of the things that make watching cinema worthwhile, discovering films that blow you away, that stand as a fantastic piece of art on the screen.

So is the case with The Red Shoes, the second film I’ve seen by Powell and Pressburger. I was quite impressed with the imaginative A Matter of Life and Death (Powell and Pressburger, 1946), but this film just takes their craft to a whole other level. The story is that of a ballet company, most importantly the director of that company, Boris Lermontov, excellently played by Anton Walbrook. Usually it isn’t such a good idea for a film to lean too much on a character, but here it works wonders. In fact, it is even hard to call Lermontov the protagonist of the film, it is more of an ensemble piece, but his character is so vital to the film and puts it in a certain direction that you cannot underestimate the importance of this character. That’s one of the things I loved the most, Walbrook’s character. He believes in suffering and sacrificing oneself to ones art, and obviously he comes into conflict with the other characters. But it is the devotion and crushing belief he puts into his faith that makes it all the more powerful, and avoids making him an antagonist, which could easily have happened. There is almost a paradox in the film, you will be brought almost to despise the character for his coldness towards others, at the same time you cannot stop admiring him. I think that most artists would like to be just like him, but few are wilful or strong enough. He is probably one of the most fascinating characters I’ve ever seen on the screen, and makes the film extremely memorable for me. I know it is subjective, and a lot of audiences will feel that he is nothing but a cold hearted brute, but for me he remains one of the most interesting and melancholic characters of cinema.

Now, the film would have been great with just this character, but there is so much more. What I cannot forget to mention is the fantastic 15 minutes long ballet sequence, which is also some of the most impressive I’ve seen in cinema, and reminds me quite a bit of A Matter of Life and Death. It starts off as a straight theatre scene shot with a camera, but slowly starts to become much more cinematic and stunning. This sequence captures some of the most indefinable and beautiful moments in cinema, and works extremely well in the context of the themes. The rest of the film is also very well shot, particularly when it moves around in different locations. This DVD is from the same Powell & Pressburger collection from which I saw A Matter of Life and Death, and in contrast to that version, this looks quite good, fairly sharp images, and the sound is good, which it better be considering how important music is to the film. Indeed, the music is another critical point which makes this film so good. It is relevant to the narrative, and has several thematic ideas. Most films just use it for simple emotional purposes, but here it is put to use the right way, much like La Pianiste (Michael Haneke, 2001). While the film aesthetically centres on ballet, the film is in its core about all art. What does it mean to be an artist and what one has to sacrifice? The film is not afraid to ask any of these questions, but keeps the answer ambiguous to the end credits, and leaves the audience to contemplate what they have just seen.

There are so many memorable scenes, so many great aspects about this film, but in the end what I will remember it the most for is the character Lermontov and the fantastic performance by Anton Walbrook. I have never heard of him or seen him in anything else, but through this film he will probably haunt my thoughts as one of the most problematic and fascinating characters in cinema history. The rest of the film? Just fantastic.