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.

A Matter of Life and Death (Powell and Pressburger, 1946)

It’s funny how when you delve into cinema there are some areas that you miss, and I’m not talking about some obscure Russian film from the 1930’s, but obvious classics and filmmakers that just go right above your head. The longer you go into the water, the deeper it gets and there is never enough time to see it all. I am sometimes ashamed at how few films I’ve actually seen and the lack of depth in my knowledge on cinema. The Powell and Pressburger duo is very famous and legendary, but it wasn’t until fairly recently that I for the first time heard of them, and decided to the get the Powell & Pressburger box set that contained 11 of their films. The first in line was A Matter of Life and Death, and when I saw the poster for it I immediately remembered it from the 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die book. I was anxious to see what sort of cinema this British duo might have to offer.

Technically speaking, this is one of the films I’ve been the most impressed with. Not in the way, oh say, Star Wars was impressive for its use of special effects, but how inventive and well implemented. The opening scene is fantastic, and the set-pieces are wonderfully created. It just shows you that truly creative and ambitious people are behind the process. But I’ve always stressed narrative over technical stuff, so lets just get down to it. A Matter of Life and Death is a fairly standard boy meets girl story, but has a compelling twist that makes the film truly original and imaginative. The protagonist played by David Niven has barely escaped a flight crash during WW2, and meets an American woman played by Kim Hunter. They fall in love at an instant, fairly classical way. However, shortly into the film it turns out that the protagonist was supposed to die, but because of the heavy fog that day the person from “up there” who was going to get him missed him. Now he has come to reclaim the protagonist, but he refuses, claiming that the time he was given made him fall in love, and now it is unreasonable to take him back. This opens for a very interesting and different story, which constantly raises questions in the audiences head, whether this messenger from “up there” is just a part of the protagonist’s imagination, or if he is real. There is no quite correct answer, and I believe many audiences will be split in two.

A Matter of Life and Death is a good example of how you take a trite old cliché and turn it around and make it wonderful and imaginative. The twist in the plot makes the film all the more memorable for the audience, and seals its place as a classic. But it’s not just the film being original, but the solid script and directing which makes the film very enjoyable to watch. There is quite a bit of hidden and non-hidden humour in there, one of my favourite characters was the French person ordered to bring the protagonist back “up there”. The film is shot in both colour and black & white; earth in colour and “up there” in black and white. This contrast is nice, and it opens up for a bit of interpretation. This is similar to Wim Wender’s Der Himmel Über Berlin (1987), where from the point of view of the angels the world is black and white, but when the angel comes to the world of the living it is in colour. What I felt was important about this was the certain coldness there was to “up there”, almost sterile. “Up there” is also only filmed on a set, so there is a purposeful hard architecture to the place, which makes earth seem all the livelier.

Seeing as I bought a box containing 11 films, I shouldn’t expect too much from the quality of the picture. However, I was a bit let down. For example, in one of the earliest scenes there are to images juxtaposed, one of David Niven and one of Kim Hunter. While the shot of Niven is fine and sharp, the shot of Hunter is quite blurry and unfocused, which I am sure was not the intention of the filmmakers. There is also a scene where the French person who is coming to get the protagonist is arriving on earth. He looks around him on the beautiful colours which are otherwise absent where he lives. This scene should have been beautiful, but the colours on the transfer are all horrible, there is a lot of wrong mixing of colours and the edges of the screen are very burnt out with some ugly orange colour. While the box set was cheap and I probably shouldn’t complain about such an extensive collection, I do feel a bit annoyed when great films don’t get the transfer they deserve. Graininess and not to sharp picture quality are not too bad, which is why black and white films usually get the best transfers, but in my book bad transfer of colour is unforgivable. Just look at the horrible quality of Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa, 1975), the colours should have been so sharp and radiant, but instead they are blurred together and don’t spark that much. In contrast, a great transfer can make brilliant results, like the Cinema Reserve version of The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986), where the colours are absolutely beautiful and crystal clear.

If you are going to check this out, I would recommend you to get a better version than I did. Still, I only spent something above £10 and still have 10 films left to see, so it isn’t too bad. Lately I’ve seen a couple of marvellous films, and this goes right into that category. The narrative is wonderful and imaginative, the cinematography is good (although it could have been better in a better DVD release), and the acting is good, although some of the lesser characters steal the show. The sets and some of the special effects are amazing, not just in a technological sense, but in the artfulness and wonderful execution and implementation of them. Very memorable, one of the best British films I’ve seen.