Director: MICHAEL POWELL / EMERIC PRESSBURGER
133 minutes| U.K.| 1948| Colour| Digital
Special family price of 15 (2 adults, 2 children) at matinee screenings only
Not just for dance-struck children or balletomanes, Powell and Pressburger’s backstage melodrama is one of their most rhapsodic creations, its riot of expressive movement and dramatic colour long claimed as a particular inspiration by Martin Scorsese. Anton Walbrook is utterly commanding as the Diaghilev-like impresario who takes under his wing ambitious dancer Moira Shearer and promising composer Marius Goring. The latter provides the score for her greatest role: a ballet based on the Hans Christian
Andersen tale The Red Shoes, wherein a young ballerina’s magical footwear whisks her to triumphant success, then refuses to let her stop dancing. For a picture which came out of post-war Britain, this parable of artistic possession is downright extraordinary ecstatic yet sinister at the same time, evoking a devotion to one’s metier that’s stronger than love, or even life itself. This new restoration is a major event, the digitally remastered results checked against the original 3-strip Technicolour by no less than Scorsese and Powell’s widow.