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September 20, 2011 (XXIII:4) and , (1948, 113 min)

Directed by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger Written by (fairy tale), Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell, Keith Winter Produced by Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger Original Music by Conducted by Thomas Beecham Choreography by Cinematography by Edited by Production Design by Art Direction by Costume Design by Hein Heckroth (uncredited) Visual Effects by F. George Gunn, E. Hague, Les Bowie Dresses and Wardrobe by Carven of Paris, Jacques Fath of Paris, Mattli of , Dorothy Edwards, Miss Tcherina (uncredited) 1959 Honeymoon, 1957 Night Ambush, 1956 Pursuit of the Graf Spee, 1955 Oh... Rosalinda!!, 1951 The Tales of Hoffmann, 1950 ...Julian Craster Gone to Earth, 1948 The Red Shoes, 1947 , 1946 Jean Short...Terry Stairway to Heaven, 1945 'I Know Where I'm Going!', 1944 A Gordon Littmann...Ike Tale, 1943 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Julia Lang...A Balletomane 1942 One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, 1941 49th Parallel, 1940 Bill Shine...Her Mate The Thief of Bagdad, 1937 , 1935 Leonide Massine...Ljubov / Shoemaker Someday, 1935 The Murder Party, 1935 The Girl in the Crowd, ...Boris Lermontov 1933 Born Lucky, 1932 C.O.D., 1932 , and 1932 My ...Professor Palmer Friend the King. ...Livy Emeric Pressburger (December 5, 1902 in Miskolc, Austria- Eric Berry...Dimitri Hungary – February 5, 1988, Saxstead, Suffolk, ) won an Irene Browne...Lady Neston Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story for 49th Parallel (1941). ...Victoria Page He has 17 director credits: 1957 Night Ambush, 1956 Pursuit of Ludmilla Tcherina...Boronskaja the Graf Spee, 1955 Oh... Rosalinda!!, 1953 Twice Upon a Time, 1952/I The Wild Heart, 1951 The Tales of Hoffmann, 1950 The Fighting Pimpernel, 1950 Gone to Earth, 1949 Hour of Glory, 1949 – Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color – Hein 1948 The Red Shoes, 1947 Black Narcissus, 1946 Stairway to Heckroth, Arthur Lawson Heaven, 1945 'I Know Where I'm Going!', 1944 A Canterbury – Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture – Tale, 1943 The Volunteer, 1943 The Life and Death of Colonel Brian Easdale Blimp, and 1942 One of Our Aircraft Is Missing.

Michael Powell (September 30, 1905 in Bekesbourne, , Jack Cardiff (September 18, 1914 in Yarmouth, Norfolk, England– February 19, 1990, Avening, Gloucestershire, England– April 22, 2009, Ely, Cambridgeshire, England) won a England) has 60 director credits, some of which are 1978 Return best cinematography Oscar for Black Narcissus and an honorary to the Edge of the World, 1972 The Boy Who Turned Yellow, Oscar in 2001 because he was a “master of light and color.” He is 1969 Age of Consent, 1966 They're a Weird Mob, 1964 credited as cinematographer on 73 films, some of which are 2005 “Espionage”, 1961 The Queen's Guards, 1960 Peeping Tom, Lights2, 1991 Vivaldi's Four Seasons, 1986 Tai-Pan, 1985 —THE RED SHOES—2

Rambo: First Blood Part II, 1984 , 1984 1969 “The First Churchills”, 1966 “Sergeant Cork”, 1965 The Scandalous, 1984 “The Far Pavilions”, 1983 The Wicked Lady, Alphabet Murders, 1961 The Day the Earth Caught Fire, 1961 1981 Ghost Story, 1980 The Dogs of War, 1980 The Awakening, “The of R.D.7”, 1961 “Boyd Q.C.”, 1961 Konga, 1961 1978 Death on the Nile , 1961 Fanny, 1957 The and the Never Back Losers, 1959 “Invisible Man”, 1959 “Hancock's Half Showgirl, 1956 The Brave One, 1956 War and Peace, 1954 The Hour”, 1959 “”, 1959 Horrors of the Black Barefoot Contessa, 1953 The Master of Ballantrae, 1951 The Museum, 1955 “Quatermass II”, 1948 The Red Shoes, 1948 Anna African Queen, 1951 Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, 1950 Karenina, 1942 The Big Blockade, 1940 Night Train to Munich, The Black Rose, 1948 Scott of the Antarctic, 1948 The Red 1940 Law and Disorder, 1939 Goodbye, Mr. Chips, 1939 “The Shoes, 1947 Black Narcissus, 1946 Stairway to Heaven, 1945 Taming of the Shrew”, 1938 “Tobias and the Angel”, 1937 Dark Caesar and Cleopatra, 1942 This Is Colour, 1941 Queen Cotton, Journey, 1936 , 1935 Mimi, 1934 Death at a 1941 Plastic Surgery in Wartime, 1939 Main Street of Paris, Broadcast, 1932 The Crooked Lady, 1932 , 1938 A Road in India, and 1935 The Last Days of Pompeii. 1930 Escape, 1930 Mystery at the Villa Rose, and 1930 The W Plan. Léonide Massinea (August 9, 1896, Moscow, Russian Empire – March 15, 1979, Cologne, West ) who plays the Esmond Knight (May 4, 1906, East Sheen, , England – shoemaker in this film, appeared in 10 films: 1961 “Laudes February 23, 1987, London, England) appeared in 140 films and Evangelii”, 1959 Honeymoon, 1954 Neapolitan Carousel, 1953 tv series and programs, among them 1987 “Fortunes of War”, Aida, 1951 The Tales of Hoffmann, 1948 The Red Shoes, 1947 1987 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, 1987 “Sleeping Carnival in Costa Rica, 1942 Spanish Fiesta, 1941 The Gay Murder”, 1985 “Blott on the Landscape”, 1984 “The Invisible Parisian, 1932 The Blue Danube. Man”, 1984 The Element of Crime, 1981 “The Borgias”, 1981 “Troilus & Cressida”, 1981 “Antony & Cleopatra”, 1978 Marius Goring (May 23, 1912, Newport, , England “Romeo & Juliet”, 1977 “The Man in the Iron Mask”, 1976 – September 30, 1998, Rushlake Green, Heathfield, East Sussex, Yellow Dog, 1976 “I, Claudius”, 1976 Robin and Marian, 1971 England) appeared in 94 films and tv programs, among “Cousin Bette”, 1969 Anne of the Thousand Days, 1969 “Doctor them,1990 Strike It Rich, 1985 “Fox Mystery Theater”, 1982 Who”, 1967 The Winter's Tale, 1966 “King of the River”, 1965 “”, 1979 “Tales of the Unexpected”, 1978 “Edward & The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965 “The Third Man”, Mrs. Simpson”, 1978 Little Girl in Blue Velvet, 1978 Holocaust, 1963 Decision at Midnight, 1961 “A for Andromeda”, 1960 1968-1976 “The Expert” (62 episodes), 1971 Zeppelin, 1970 “Barnaby Rudge”, 1960 Peeping Tom, 1960 Sink the Bismarck!, First Love, 1968 The Girl on a Motorcycle, 1967 “”, 1959 “Volpone”, 1958-1959 “Our Mutual Friend”, 1958 Missiles 1967 “The Revenue Men”, 1967 The 25th Hour, 1960-1967 from Hell, 1957 “Nicholas Nickleby”, 1957 The Prince and the “ITV Play of the Week”, 1965 from the Beach, 1964 “The Showgirl, 1956 Helen of Troy, 1955 Richard III, 1953 The Steel Third Man”, 1963 “Maigret”, 1961 The Devil's Daffodil, 1960 Key, 1951 The River,1950 Gone to Earth, 1948 The Red Shoes, Exodus, 1959 The Angry Hills, 1958 Hell, Heaven or Hoboken, 1948 , 1947 The End of the River, 1947 The Inheritance, 1951-1957 “BBC Sunday-Night Theatre”, 1957 Night Ambush, 1947 Black Narcissus, 1944 , 1944 , 1956 “” (18 episodes), 1955 Quentin 1941 This England, 1939 “Rake's Progress”, 1939 “Twelfth Durward, 1955 Break in the Circle, 1954 The Barefoot Contessa, Night”, 1939 “Mary Rose”, 1938 “Derby Day”, 1937 “Night 1952 The Paris Express, 1952 The Mistress, 1951 Pandora and Must Fall”, 1937 The Vicar of Bray, 1934 Father and Son, 1934 the Flying Dutchman, 1950 Odette, 1948 The Red Shoes, 1946 The Blue Squadron, 1934 Lest We Forget, 1931 The Gaunt Stairway to Heaven, 1946 Night Boat to Dublin, 1940 The Stranger, 1931 Romany Love, and 1928 The Blue Peter. Frightened Lady, 1940 Pastor Hall, 1939 Dead Men Tell No Tales, and 1938 The Bear. Eric Berry (January 9, 1913, London, England – September 10, 1993 (age 80) in Laguna Beach, California) appeared in 33 titles, among them 1983 “Sadat”, 1973 Blade, 1964 “The Man from Anton Walbrook (November 19, 1896, , Austria- U.N.C.L.E.”, 1961 “Vanity Fair”, 1960 “Omnibus”, 1954 Double Hungary, August 9, 1967, Garatshausen, , Germany) Exposure, 1953 Escape by Night, 1953 Gilbert and Sullivan, appeared in 53 theatrical and TV films,among them, 1966 1948 The Red Shoes, 1941 49th Parallel, and 1937 The Edge of “Robert und Elisabeth”, 1963 “Der Arzt am Scheideweg”, 1962 the World. “Laura”, 1960 “Venus im Licht”, 1958 I Accuse!, 1957 Saint Joan, 1955 Lola Montès, 1955 Oh... Rosalinda!!, 1954 On Trial, Irene Browne (June 29, 1896, London, England – July 24, 1965, 1948 The Red Shoes, 1945 The Man from Morocco, 1943 The London, England) has 27 acting credits, some of which are 1963 Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, 1941 49th Parallel, 1941 The Wrong Arm of the Law, 1955-1961 “ITV Television Suicide Squadron, 1940 Gaslight, 1937 Victoria the Great, 1937 Playhouse,” 1959 Serious Charge, 1957 All at Sea, 1951 I'll The Soldier and the Lady, 1936 Michel , 1935 Ich war Never Forget You, 1950 Madeleine, 1948 Quartet, 1948 The Red Jack Mortimer, 1935 The Baron, 1934 Maskerade, 1933 Shoes, 1947 Meet Me at Dawn, 1941 The Remarkable Mr. Kipps, Viktor and Viktoria, 1933 The Battle of the Walzes, 1931/I 1941 The Prime Minister, 1938 Pygmalion, 1933 Berkeley Trapeze, 1923 Martin Luther, and 1915 Marionetten. Square, 1933 Peg o' My Heart, 1933 Christopher Strong, 1933 Cavalcade, 1929 The Letter, 1919 After Many Days, and 1917 Austin Trevor...Professor Palmer (October 7, 1897, Belfast, Drink. Ireland – January 22, 1978, London, England) appeared in 93 theatrical and tv films, some of which were 1972 “Whack-O!”, Powell and Pressburger—THE RED SHOES—3

Moira Shearer (January 17, 1926, Dunfermline, Fife, – modern ideas and the irrational, between science and savagery, January 31, 2006, , Oxfordshire, England) appeared in or between religion and eroticism. only 7 theatrical and video films: 1987 “A Simple Man,” 1961 Black Tights, 1960 Peeping Tom, 1955 The Man Who Loved Although such mergings of reality and fantasy met with approval Redheads, 1953 The Story of Three Loves, 1951 The Tales of by the moviegoing public, Powell and Pressburger were less Hoffmann, and 1948 The Red Shoes. successful with the British film establishment. In a sense they were alienated from it through their exercise of a decidedly non- Ludmilla Tchérina (October 10, 1924, Paris, – March British flamboyance. 21, 2004, Paris, France) has 25 acting credits, some of which are 1975 “La passion d'Anna Karénine,” 1974 “La reine de Saba,” From World Film Directors V.I, ed. John Wakeman, H.H. 1973 “Salomé,” 1972 “La dame aux camellias,” 1972 Wilson Co., NY 1987. MCHAEL POWELL entry: “L'Atlantide,” 1971 “La possédée,” 1964 “Le mandarin merveilleux,” 1962 Les amants de Teruel, 1959 Honeymoon, In 1925, on his way to visit his father, who had 1955 Oh... Rosalinda!!, 1954 Sign of the Pagan, 1954 Mata acquired a hotel on the Riviera, he stopped off in Paris to catch Hari's Daughter, 1953 Sins of Rome, 1952 Grand gala, 1951 The up with the work of Buñuel and Dali and “that lot, involved in Evil Forest, 1951 Clara de Montargis, 1951 The Tales of surrealism,” as he put it to an interviewer, adding that “of course, Hoffmann, 1951 Here Is the Beauty, 1951 À la mémoire d'un all films are surrealist . . . because they are making something héros, 1951 Mephisto-valse, 1950 La nuit s'achève, 1949 that looks like a real world but isn’t.” He entered the film Fandango, 1948 The Red Shoes, and 1946 Un revenant. industry the same year when his father introduced him at a party to Harry Lachman, an artist and from The St. James Film filmmaker then working with Directors Encyclopedia ed. Rex Ingram on Mare Nostrum Andrew Sarris. Visible Ink at the Nice studio. Press, NY 1998, Powell & Powell joined the unit and Pressburger [combined entry “worked all through” Mare signed by Stephen L. Hanson] Nostrum, an extravagant spy story. He says “it was a great Between the years 1942 and film to come in on because, 1957, English director Michael being a spectacular film, full of Powell and his Hungarian enormous tricks with a great partner, Emeric Pressburger, theme and an international cast, formed one of the most it gave you ideas which stayed remarkable partnerships in with you all through your life. . . cinema. Under the .My first job was rally to stick collaborative pseudonym “The around–that was how Harry Archers,” the two created a Lachman put it. Then I was a series of highly visual and grip, but I was unofficially imaginative treatments of attached to Lachman as the romantic and supernatural strange, cultured young themes that have defied easy Englishman who had a categorization by film remarkable gift for falling over historians. Although both were things.” listed jointly as director, Some of these qualities screenwriter, and frequently as producer, and the extent of each were put to work in Ingram’s next two films, The Magician one’s participation on any given film is difficult to measure, it is (1926) and The Garden of Allah (1927), in both of which Powell probably most accurate to credit Powell with the actual had small roles providing “comic relief.” These were great days visualization of the films while Pressburger functioned primarily in the film industry in France: “everyone was mad about the as a writer. cinema,” and in Nice Powell met celebrated painters, sculptors, and writers all eager to contribute to the medium. Then Ingram Thematically, Powell and Pressburger operate in a limbo decided to take a break from films. Lachman launched a series of somewhere between romance and realism. The former, comedy travelogues featuring Powell, but this project was ended characterized by technical effects, camera angles and after a few months by the arrival of the talkies and, Powell says, movements, and the innovative use of color, often intrudes in the “we closed up the studio, said goodbye to the sun, and headed for merest of details in fundamentally naturalistic films. In the eyes the fog belt.” Lachman joined British International at the Elstree of some, this weakens the artistic commitment to realism. On the studios, where he found work for Powell also, first as stills other hand, the psychological insights embodied in serious photographer on Hitchcock’s Champagne and then as a cutter on fantasies like A Matter of Life and Death are too often dismissed Lupu Pick’s A Knight in London. Powell’s last assignment at as simply entertainment. Most of the Powell-Pressburger efforts Elstree was as an uncredited contributor to the script of are, in fact, attempts at fundamental reconciliations between Hitchcock’s Blackmail—he says it was he that suggested the Powell and Pressburger—THE RED SHOES—4 final chase over the roof of the British Museum: “Being an East came their first collaboration, The Life and Death of Colonel End boy, Hitch had never been there.” Blimp (1943). The hero’s real name is Clive Candy (Roger In 1930 Powell joined a young American producer Livesy)—the title refers to a character, created by cartoonist named Jerome Jackson, then entering the British “quota quickie” David Low, depicted as an ultra-conservative old officer senior market. Alarmed by the fact that only about five per cent of enough to impose his antiquated ideas on the modern movies shown in Britain were made there, the government had army…. plays Candy’s “Ideal woman” (three red- instituted a quota system that was supposed to improve the headed generations of her) and Anton Walbrook is a “good situation. The result was a flood of generally rubbishy cut-rate German”—the enemy who becomes Candy’s lifelong friend. pictures, most of them less than an hour in length, that were Apart from The Thief of Baghdad, this was Powell’s first film in shown as second features with Hollywood movies. …One of the color. It was gorgeously designed by and last of Powell’s “Quickies” was beautifully filmed by an illustrious team of photographers_Jack (1936), made for an American producer named Joe Cardiff and , under the direction of Georges Rock….Powell had been trying to find backing for a film [on the Périnal. depopulation of the Scottish islands].Rock encouraged him to Colonel Blimp is an ambivalent film—apparently write a script, and then sent him off to the remote island intended as a warning against the dangers of leaving too much of to make what became The Edge of the World, his first power in the hands of bumbling old diehards like Clive Candy, it personal film….In 1937 it was chosen by the New York Film is in fact full of nostalgia for a more heroic and gallant notion of Critics as the best foreign movie of the year, and in 1938 Powell warfare than seemed viable in 1943. The Ministry of Information published an account of the making of the picture, 200,000 Feet thought it defeatist, and encouraged by Winston Churchill on Foula. himself, did everything it could to prevent its production. Army At that point Powell was help was denied and , considering going to Hollywood, but who was to have played the lead, was , Impressed by The Edge refused leave from military service. In fact of the World, offered him a contract. His Roger Livesy gave the performance of his first film for Korda was life, making Candy an irresistibly likable (1939), a fast-moving and often amusing old warhorse, while the government’s spy thriller set during World War I…. The attempts to suppress the movie only Spy in Black began Powell’s collaboration increased its immense boxoffice appeal. with the Hungarian-born scenarist, Emeric The Volunteer (1943), a medium- Pressburger….Powell himself produced length recruiting film in which Ralph 49th Parallel (1941), financed by the Richardson plays himself (and Othello)_, Ministry of Information. A story about the was followed by A Canterbury Tale crew of a wrecked German submarine on (1944)….The Archers had more success the run in Canada, it was intended to with I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), in counter isolationism in North America. The which goes to the Western film was shot mostly on location in Canada Isles of Scotland to marry a millionaire but with a starry cast that included Laurence falls under the spell of Celtic mysticism Olivier, Leslie Howard, Anton Walbrook, and winds up in the arms of the haunted and Gylnis Johns as representatives of young laird (). Pamela various aspects of Canadian life, and Eric Brown gives an extraordinary performance Portman as the ruthless Nazi commander. Vaughan Williams as an aristocratic sorceress. It was clear to Raymond Durgnat that provided the score. Pressburger’s script won him an Oscar, and “Powell’s film reveals a serious belief in the wayward natural the movie was a great financial success…. forces. Their fierce power is asserted in constant hints and jabs (a The plot of 49th Parallel is virtually reversed in One of close-up of the eagle’s beak ripping off a rabbit’s ear) which sees Our Aircraft is Missing (1942), co-scripted and co-produced by nature as a Nietzschean whirl of blood and death. . . .But the Powell and Pressburger, in which the crew of a British bomber hero, sailing. . . [the heroine’s ] boat through the treacherous are forced to bail out over Holland and are smuggled to safety whirlpool, overcomes these forces with that protective manliness under the noses of the Germans by the Dutch Resistance. Made which. . .is itself a force of nature.” This is one of the most in the documentary style typical of the period, it opens with an personal and original of Powell’s films, and one of the best extraordinary shot of an empty bomber sailing eerily across the loved–Nora Sayre has recalled that she was almost deprived of Channel. her allowance when she was twelve because she went to see it The same year, 1942, Powell and Pressburger week after week. established their own production company, The Archers, under Asked by the Ministry of Information for a film that the financial umbrella provided by J. Arthur Rank’s Independent might help to reverse the post-war decline in Anglo-American Producers. Most of the films they made for the Archers credited relations, Powell and Pressburger came up with A Matter of Life Powell and Pressburger as joint directors, producers, and and Death (Stairway to Heaven in the United States)….The scenarists, though it seems fairly clear that Pressburger script is full of the kind of erudite and witty paradoxes that dominated the writing, Powell the directing…. Powell regards as characteristic of the Hungarian Pressburger— After (1943), a story of the Dutch “They always see he world inside out. All their jokes are reverse Resistance that they produced but neither wrote nor directed, jokes.” For the director, this was “the most perfect film…a Powell and Pressburger—THE RED SHOES—5 wonderful conjuring trick to get handed.”…Black Narcissus (in The Archers’ last two productions, both unexceptional which Anglican nuns set up a new mission in the Himalayas, was war films, The Battle of the River Plate (Pursuit of the Graf Spee, also shot in the studio…. 1956) and Ill Met by Moonlilght (Night Ambush,1957). Working Moira Shearer, one of the most striking of Powell’s red- separately, neither Powell nor Pressburger ever really established haired heroines, is a ballet dancer fatally torn between love and a consistent pattern of production again. Powell’s next picture, art in The Red Shoes (originally written by Pressburger for another ballet film called Luna de Miel (Honeymoon), was made Alexander Korda but bought back by the Archers.) Anton in 1961 in Spain. Then he met a writer and former cypher expert Walbrook is magnificent as the diabolical impressario named Leo Marks, who proposed a picture in the sadistic horror- Lermontov, the choreographer is played by Leonid Massine, and movie genre then being exploited by Anglo-Amalgamated. The the heroine’s co-dancers are Ludmilla Tcherina and Robert result was Peeping Tom (1960). Helpmann (the film’s actual choreographer). Music was again in The film centers on Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm), who the hands of Brian Easdale, and Hein Heckroth’s spectacular sets works in a film studio by day as a focus-puller, and in the were lyrically photographed by Jack Cardiff. The film went evenings sometimes makes pornographic films of an appallingly nearly L200,000- over budget and Powell says that “when the specialized nature. It is his pleasure to stab beautiful girls Rank Organisation saw it they thought they were sunk….It’s through the throat with a blade concealed in his tripod and to film probably grossed $20 to $30 million.” their dying agonies in close-up, a mirror on the tripod allowing them to share this experience. This voyeur psychosis is traced The Red Shoes seems to Roy back to Mark’s childhood, during which Armes “Powell and Pressburger’s his father, an authority on the most explicit statement of the psychology of fear, had used him as a relationship of art and life,” and “the guinea pig, filming his reactions to high point of their career in both terrifying situations, natural or commercial and artistic terms….All contrived. [their] central themes and stylistic And all these horrors were, of concerns find expression in The Red course, set up and filmed by Michael Shoes: the Romantic opposition of art Powell and his cameraman (Otto and life, the concern with a Heller), so that the movie becomes an choreography of film whereby extremely complex essay on the overwhelming passions are acted out voyeurism involved in making and rather than expressed through words, and the creation of a watching films, as Powell clearly recognized. He himself plays dynamic inner-relationship of vivid visual imagery and an Mark’s father in Peeping Tom, and he has said that he “felt very immensely rhythmic soundtrack. In a memorable climax the close to the hero, who is an ‘absolute’ director, someone who ballerina dies but the ballet goes on without her, the audience approaches life like a director, who is conscious of and suffers being made to imagine her presence by the conviction of music from it. And I am someone who is thrilled by technique, always and production.”… mentally editing the scene in front of me in the street, so I was The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), from Denis Arundell’s able to share his anguish.” adaptation of Offenbach’s operetta, was The Archers’ last film Except in the trade press, where the film was praised for for Korda…using much the same team as The Red Shoes. Its its commercial potential, the critical response was almost totally romantic excesses embarrassed some reviewers but it took the negative—a passionate chorus of disgust and loathing that is Special Jury Prize at Cannes and delighted Raymond Durgnat, examined at some length in Ian Christie’s Powell, Pressburger who wrote: “this gallimaufry of Gothicisms, this pantechnicon of and Others…..It virtually ended his career [in Britain] while the palettical paroxysms…this massive accumulaton of Mighty shorter version seen in the United States was largely ignored. Wurlitzerisms, follows Offenbach’s operetta relatively faithfully Its immediate successor was The Queen’s Guards and fills in filmically by ballet, décor and by-play, seeking, (1961), a “High Tory” tribute to the Brigade of Guards starring moreover, an operatic visual style with a splendid disdain of both Raymond and Daniel Massey, of no special interest. After plausibility….If often overblown, the film is intermittently that, shunned by backers and distributors, Powell was reduced to breathtaking, an effect which survives repeated viewings.” directing episodes of Espionage, The Defenders, and other In 1944 Powell had directed a stage production of television series, or to filming abroad. Bluebeard’s Castle (1964) Himingway’s The Fifth Column, and in 1951 he returned to the is a straightforward record of a Zagreb production of Bartók’s theatre with ’s play Hanging Judge. At about opera, and this was followed by two “romps” made in Australia, the same time he also tried without success to set up two They’re a Weird Mob (1966) and Age of Consent (1969), co- ambitious screen projects—a short film of a scene from The produced with , who also stars as a painter Odyssey that was to have had words by Dylan Thomas and music entangled with a youthful Helen Mirren. Back in Britain, and re- by Stravinsky, and a version of Shakespeare’s with united with Pressburger, Powell made a prize-winning children’s Moira Shearer and . In fact his next picture was a film, The Boy Who Turned Yellow. short ballet film, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1955), distributed But meanwhile, a reassessment of Powell’s work had by Twentieth Century-Fox The Archers went back into begun in such British journals as Motion and Movie, and in such production with Oh Rosalinda! (1955), based on Strauss’ opera foreign ones as Image et Son and Midi-Minuit Fantastique. Since Die Fledermaus. This “had some lovely things in it,” Powell 1970, there has been an apparently endless series of Powell thought, but “is one of our failures.” retrospectives all over the world….In 1981 he was “senior Powell and Pressburger—THE RED SHOES—6 director in residence” at ’s Zoetrope deeper, and darker than any such film had ventured toward Studios in Los Angeles, working on a long-planned film about before—or would after. the Russian dancer Anna Pavlova…. That this film would prove so potent wasn’t at all Raymond Durgnat has compared Powell to Abel Gance in his obvious when the idea first took shape back in 1934. Film titan “weakness for patriotic sentiment” and for “optical shocks,”… Alexander Korda, whose productions The Private Life of Henry Durgnat suggests that Powell “remains an upholder, VIII and The Scarlet Pimpernel had made Great Britain a serious through its lean years, of the Méliès tradition. . .a school of rival to Hollywood, decided that he wanted to put together ‘Cinema’ which is always exquisitely conscious of not only its centering on the tumultuous life of the brilliant, troubled dancer cinematic effects but its cinematic nature.” Nijinsky—but with ample room to showcase his off- and on- Powell regards not Gance but Walt Disney as “the screen leading lady Merle Oberon. In other words, a very tricky greatest genius of us all.” After the death of his wife Frances scenario. Screen tests of sundry ballerinas were shot by Ludwig Reidy he married the film editor in 1984. Berger, then Korda’s choice to direct, and Pressburger was hired to write the script. Using Hans Christian Andersen’s dark fairy tale “The Red Shoes” as a plot pretext was also Korda’s idea at this early stage, though precisely how hadn’t been decided. So Pressburger, a Hungarian Jew who got his start as a scriptwriter in Germany—before Hitler’s rise necessitated a hasty exit for England—immersed himself in the world of the Ballets Russes. That dance company was still world famous at the time, despite the passing of its great impresario, Sergei Diaghilev, in 1929: the dances it created, and its conception of dance as a total theatrical experience, had set the standard for terpsichorean excellence everywhere. The prospect of putting this on-screen was clearly tantalizing to Korda, who always had his eyes peeled for the big, colorful, and splashy. With the coming of World War II, however, the as yet untitled project was put off—definitively so when Korda and Oberon called it a day. But Pressburger was still excited by the idea, so he bought from Korda everything that had been developed for the project thus far, and in 1946 began in earnest to mount The Red Shoes, as it was then called. David Eherenstein, “The Red Shoes: Dancing for By this time, Pressburger had formed an alliance with your Life” (Criterion notes): Michael Powell, a British director who’d cut his teeth on “quota quickies,” low-budget films decreed by the Cinematograph Films “Why do you want to dance?” “Why do you want to live?” Act of 1927 to promote British production in the face of a A question followed by another question stands at the Hollywood-dominated industry. They first worked together in beating heart of The Red Shoes. It’s an entirely rhetorical 1939, on The Spy in Black, starring , and following exchange, but it underscores the power and the mystery of the success of their 1942 One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1948 masterpiece. For established their soon-to-be legendary production company, the the respective speakers, a domineering impresario and a strong- Archers. With an arrow hitting a bull’s-eye as its avatar, the willed ballerina, are talking about much more than dance. The Archers went on to create such original and ambitious works as real subject of their conversation, and of the film that contains it, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Canterbury Tale, I Know is artistic dedication, even unto death. Where I’m Going!, A Matter of Life and Death, and Black Sounds rather grim for a work so beloved (countless all- Narcissus, all dealing in one way or another with aspects of the time ten best lists), so inspirational (numerous references in A British national character—in a manner that was celebratory but Chorus Line), and so influential (Gene Kelly screened it for his never without an insightful, critical edge—and always with a collaborators fifteen times before embarking on An American in visually extravagant style. The Red Shoes raised the bar Powell Paris). But the film’s ebullient yet oddly sinister tone struck a and Pressburger had set for imaginative moviemaking even chord with audiences the world over. This wide appeal can be higher, including taking Technicolor, which they’d used so understood in part in terms of genre. It is a kind of musical, a expressively in Colonel Blimp, Black Narcissus, and especially A mainstream favorite, as well as a Technicolor spectacular. But Matter of Life and Death, into new realms: this time, they peered musical generally comes as a hyphenate with comedy attached to not into the afterlife, as that last film had done, but into the souls it. The Red Shoes is drama. Perhaps the key to its power lies in of human beings. Additionally, in contrast to their previous the fact that it was created at a crucial juncture in history, and Anglocentric efforts, The Red Shoes found them looking toward embodies that moment. As Powell says in his memoir A Life in the Continent. Movies: “We had all been told for ten years to go out and die for While there was a recognizable division of labor freedom and democracy . . . , and now the war was over, The Red between Powell and Pressburger, with the latter in charge of the Shoes told us to go out and die for art.” In taking artistic screenplay and the former the directing, the Archers cosigned expression through dance so seriously, The Red Shoes goes well their films, the better to underscore the fact that not only did their beyond the confines of a “backstage musical” into areas richer, roles frequently overlap but they stood at the helm of a group of craftsmen—cinematographer Jack Cardiff, production designer Powell and Pressburger—THE RED SHOES—7

Hein Heckroth, composer Brian Easdale, and actor Marius rarest of all cinematic supernovas: a natural. And she amply Goring, to name a few—whose contributions to the whole should demonstrates that the filmmakers were right in seeking out a never be taken for granted. The Red Shoes reflects this in the dancer for the female lead, rather than an actress whose story itself. For while it centers on a near megalomaniacal performance would be supplemented by a ballet double. For impresario, the brilliant young dancer he makes a star, and the when you look at Shearer, you see a dancer—even when she’s youthful firebrand of a composer whose love for the dancer standing still. Adding to that is the way she so easily conveys the threatens the impresario’s authority, the film concerns an entire spirit of a young woman who knows what she wants for a career, ballet company and the many different and talented people and is willing to take on the powerful man who wants to give it involved in making it run. to her. Powell and Pressburger decided to bypass Nijinsky and Powell and Pressburger’s sensitivity to physical zero in on his lover-mentor Diaghilev. And while antihero Boris dramatic nuance is made plain in an early scene featuring another Lermontov isn’t depicted as sexually or romantically involved dancer-actress, Ludmilla Tchérina. While we get only a few with anyone in an ordinary way, his obsession with dancer shots of Tchérina rehearsing or performing in the course of the Victoria Page goes right to the heart of the Diaghilev-Nijinksy film, in this moment, when her prima ballerina, Boronskaja, story. For like Diaghilev, Lermontov doesn’t wish simply to guides the young composer Julian Craster (Goring) to the make his dancer a star—he wants to backstage area of the theater—briskly control her life in every possible way. gliding through, head held high, in a But how can you dramatize that manner that an ordinary actress would without totally alienating movie have found hard to execute—she audiences? Powell found the answer in makes her greatest mark. What she Anton Walbrook: “When it came to does in this scene is convey not only a The Red Shoes and that devil Boris dancer’s instinctive physicality but the Lermontov, there was no question in soigné glamour of the ballet as a whole. our minds as to who should play him, This is carried a step further by Robert and give a performance filled with Helpmann, who plays a principal passion, integrity, and, yes, with dancer and also choreographed the homosexuality.” climactic ballet, called The Red Shoes. Born Adolf Wohlbrück, A fortiori Léonide Massine, who was a Walbrook came from a family of circus clowns but turned to Ballets Russes dancer and choreographer and also Diaghilev’s acting from the start, studying with the great . protégé in the wake of Nijinsky’s departure. Like Shearer, Making a name for himself on-screen, he appeared in such hits as Massine had never acted before, but one would never guess it Viktor und Victoria (the 1933 precursor to Blake Edwards’s 1982 from his exceptionally skillful performance as the antic Grischa romp Victor/Victoria) and a 1936 sound version of the silent Ljubov, who is as warm as Lermontov is cold. In the Red Shoes expressionist classic The Student of Prague. But Hitler’s rise to ballet, he plays the shoemaker (a role the film credits him with power made it impossible for an artist who was both gay and creating), the weird, long-haired figure who lures the girl into his Jewish to do anything other than get out of Germany as soon as shop to take the footwear that will both fulfill her dreams and end possible. Walbrook found a home in England, making a her life. That Lermontov casts the cheery Grischa in this role is particularly triumphant appearance as a German émigré in the downright diabolical. Archers’ wartime rouser The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Powell and Pressburger designed their film to climax where he delivers the central patriotic speech with a resonance with this ballet, running some twenty minutes in length. It was a and sincerity that have never failed to move anyone who has seen concept quite without precedent. While the action that precedes it—even if they aren’t British. The Red Shoes required that the sequence charts the process of creation, this isn’t done by Walbrook make a seemingly unsympathetic man sympathetic. teaching the audience anything about dance steps or musical And that he does, not by softening the character but by composition. Rather it’s the spirit behind the ballet that comes to accentuating his mystery. While Powell and Pressburger saw the fore, as in the scene where Vicky, dressed in an elaborate ball Lermontov as one part Diaghilev and one part Alexander Korda gown, a tiny crown on her head, goes to see Lermontov at the (in his grandiose plans for his ballet), Walbrook’s own château he’s rented just outside town. Climbing an enormous personality added something extra. The dark glasses that staircase overgrown with weeds, she suggests the sort of fairy- Lermontov wears—even on occasions when there isn’t any tale heroine Cocteau would have created had he made Beauty sunlight—were an affectation of Walbrook’s. It set a fashion that and the Beast in color. Powell and Pressburger’s Beast, was taken up in earnest a decade later by sundry celebrities in Lermontov, has to deal with more than Shearer’s Beauty, Italy, during the dolce vita era known as Il Boom. His sartorial however. For right after informing her that she will star in his fastidiousness, coupled with a veneer of emotional reserve barely next—and greatest—creation, he calls in Craster. hiding a passionate sexual drive, is clearly what Powell meant Earlier, Lermontov explained to the composer: “The when he spoke of the part played by Walbrook’s own gayness in ballet of The Red Shoes is from a fairy tale by Hans Andersen. It the Lermontov role. is the story of a girl who’s devoured by an ambition to attend a As for the object of Lermontov’s all-consuming dance in a pair of red shoes. She gets the shoes, goes to the attention, the Archers chose an actual dancer, Moira Shearer. A dance. At first, all goes well and she’s very happy. At the end of featured performer, but not yet a star, with the Sadler’s Wells the evening, she gets tired and wants to go home. But the red ballet, Shearer proved, to Powell’s complete delight, to be that shoes are not tired. In fact, the red shoes are never tired. They Powell and Pressburger—THE RED SHOES—8 dance her out into the streets. They dance her over the mountains would. Not just in terms of an unobstructed, up-close view of the and valleys, through fields and forests, through night and day. dance, but inside Vicky’s mind as Lermontov and Julian take Time rushes by. Love rushes by. Life rushes by. But the red turns partnering her while she dances through make-believe shoes dance on.” carnivals, ballrooms, deserts, and cloudy skies with pieces of “What happens in the end?” Craster inquires. cellophane falling, along with humans, as she drives ever onward “Oh, in the end, she dies,” says Lermontov, with brisk toward obliteration. matter-of-factness. The ballet is a kind of magic, psychodramatic tableau There are two elements that make this pivotal moment vivant. The Andersen story is enacted in it, but also the conflict indelible. One is, of course, Walbrook—the dramatic stress he among Vicky, Lermontov, and Craster. Fantasy and reality places when intoning “the red shoes” and “never tired,” the intermingle right from the start, when the shoemaker puts the masterly cool with which he dominates the scene. The other is ballet slippers on the ground and they stand by themselves, until the sudden appearance on the soundtrack of the first notes of Vicky suddenly, and quite magically, leaps into them. As the music for the ballet that Craster has yet to write. It’s already a ballet progresses, color and atmosphere become as important as part of him, Powell and Pressburger seem to be saying. It’s an dance steps—especially when the gaiety of the initial moments assignment that’s ordained by fate. And so is its outcome. Julian gives way to despair and horror. Cardiff’s lush, textured and Vicky will not only work together as artists but fall in love. cinematography works hand in hand with Heckroth’s production And this love will prove their undoing. designs, as a public square becomes a carnival, a nightscape of “You cannot have it both ways,” Lermontov tells monkey-headed streetwalkers, an empty ballroom, and an even Grischa, in a moment designed for Vicky to overhear. “The emptier desert. Strangest of all is one long shot where we see the dancer who relies on the doubtful comforts of human love will girl pirouetting in the foreground while in the background never be a great dancer. Never.” He is speaking of Boronskaja, dancers appear to be worshipping a grotesque, seemingly living who in a scene just before—when she announced to the company mask that hangs on a stone wall. Offstage, things are worse, as that she was leaving to get married—looked beyond the circle of the action builds to the wrenching scene where Craster and dancers happily congratulating her for a glimpse of Lermontov, Lermontov demand she choose between them—which she who had suddenly left the room. “He has no heart, that man,” she clearly cannot. said with pointed poignancy. The truth, of course, is that he does, “Take off the red shoes,” Vicky pleads to Julian at the but he hides it. We can see that in the shot that follows her last. But the red shoes can never really come off—just as The declaration—Lermontov sitting in his office in complete Red Shoes once seen can never be forgotten. Particularly not in darkness. this stunning new restoration, for which restorers went so far as Or is he, perchance, the Prince of Darkness? The ballet to meticulously repair (using the latest digital technology) the certainly suggests that—for what we’re shown is not so much original negatives, the better to give the film new, vivid life. But what’s going on on any imaginable stage but what’s roiling The Red Shoes is clearly more than a film. It’s a complete and through Vicky’s mind as she dances. The audience is never seen, indelible expression of life and art themselves. and we, the film audience, see more than anyone in a theater ever

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2011 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXIII: September 27 Diary of a Country Priest/Journal d’un curé de campagne, Robert Bresson (1951) October 4 Black Orpheus/Orfeu Negro, Marcel Camus (1959) October 11 Bonnie and Clyde, Arthur Penn (1967) October 18 Marketa Lazarová, František Vláčil (1967) October 25 The Last Wave, Peter Weir (1977) November 1 True Confessions, Ulu Grosbard (1981) November 8 Chunking Express/Chung Hing sam lam, Wong Kar-Wei (1994) November 15 Richard III, Richard Loncraine (1995) November 22 , Julie Taymor (2002) November 29 Revanche, Götz Spielmann (2008) December 6 My Fair Lady, George Cukor (1964)

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