Powell & Pressburger: The Red Shoes
October 23, 2024
Enchanted Evenings: The Boundless Cinema of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
The Archers’ most famous film feverishly accompanies a young ballerina’s (Moira Shearer) rise to fame. Dedicated to Art, she’s tempted by earthbound love (composer Marius Goring), but her red shoes dance her on and on. The film that launched ballet dancers of all genders.
On the Blog - Film Notes: The Red Shoes
Individual Tickets: Select showtime to purchase.
Passes: $125 | $85 SIFF Members - includes full series access
SIFF year-round passes and vouchers are not valid for this screening.
Young Michael Powell, “proud of being an Englishman,” worked at his father’s French Riviera hotel and met master French painters Matisse and Bonnard, American film director Rex Ingram, and American avant-garde dancer Isadora Duncan. Powell believed that “dance was the first art form, older than religion,” and wondered, “Why is legend more potent than reality in stirring the emotions?” The alchemy of these thoughts, and the historical 1518 European dance plague, the bewitched-dancing shoes fairy tale The Red Shoes, and Emeric Pressburger’s love of paradox yielded the pure gold of the Archers’ most universally acclaimed film. Powell said he would die for his art, and fiery young ballerina Vicky Page (ballet star and actress Moira Shearer) has a consuming passion for dance. Mesmerizing impresario Lermontav (Anton Walbrook) says he can make her queen of the the world’s dance stages, but composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring) loves Vicky as a woman and a great artist, not a commodity. Amidst the international swirl of backstage bustle, Vicky is forced to choose between Art and Life. Powell returns to his youthful Cote d’Azur environs for a climactic twenty-minute Surrealistic ballet that stirs our souls with romantic agony, hope, and transcendent beauty. Leonide Massine, Robert Helpmann, Ludmilla Tcherina. Technicolor.
—Greg Olson
- Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
- Principal Cast: Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring
- Country: United Kingdom
- Year: 1948
- Running Time: 133 min.
- Producer: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
- Screenplay: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
- Cinematographers: Jack Cardiff
- Editors: Reginald Mills
- Music: Brian Easdale
- Awards: Oscars 1949 (Best Art Direction, Music), Golden Globes 1949 (Best Motion Picture Score)
- Filmography: Night Ambush (1957), Pursuit of the Graf Spee (1956), The Tales of Hoffman (1951), The Fighting Pimpernel (1950), Gone to Earth (1950), Hour of Glory (1949), Black Narcissus (1947), Stairway to Heaven (1946), I Know Where I’m Going (1945), A Canterbury Tale (1944), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942)
- Language: English
- International Sales: The Film Foundation