The Red Shoes Marius Goring, Jean Short, Gordon Littmann Director: Michael Powell
'Why do you want to dance?' ballet svengali Boris Lermontov asks dancer Vicky Page near the start of The Red Shoes. 'Why do you want to live?' the ballerina fires back.
British director Michael Powell's dance masterpiece is neatly summed up in this exchange. Powell's film, written by his producer and collaborator Emeric Pressburger, charts true artists' need to create to the exclusion of everything else - even if those artistic endeavours are detrimental to other areas of their lives. From this material Powell fashions an artistic treatise masquerading as a popular musical.
The red shoes of the title refer to a ballet within the film that heralds the dancer's artistic flowering. The ballet is based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen which features a pair of malignant and magical red shoes. In the fairy tale, a young girl buys the shoes from a demonic shoemaker to wear at a dance. The red shoes help her dance brilliantly - but at a price: they won't let her stop. The young girl finally exhausts herself and dies.
Powell uses Andersen's tale as a metaphor for artists whose need to create leads to lives filled with tragedy.
Powell is generally considered to be Britain's greatest filmmaker. Films such as A Canterbury Tale and A Matter of Life and Death show a sensitive and sophisticated understanding of the British character. The Red Shoes is his most well-known film.