Film Fatale: The Red Shoes and the Tortured Artist
Balletcore TikTok, Nathalie Portman in Black Swan, and Hollywood’s obsession with the torn artist. Before all this there was The Red Shoes (1948), the technicolour classic based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale of the same name. This film presents itself as another potential campy classic, with the quirky stagehands and the quick talking choreographers snapping fingers at the beautiful dancers on their last legs. But, like all great memorable films, we’re snapped out of this familiar narrative and brought into something completely otherworldly at the halfway mark. After lead dancer Vicky (Moira Shearer) has the strenuous rehearsals of The Red Shoes, with the composer Julian (Marius Goring) being told to play the musical score during her every meal so it sticks in her every thought, we are waiting for the curtains to open.
We have a luxury as the film’s audience of seeing this performance from every angle, we’re on the stage with her. We see the sweat dripping down her forehead and her perspective as she twirls and twirls and cuts focus on the men who are pushing her to her limit, showing the chaos and beauty perfectly. As later in the film Vicky will be made to choose between her ballet career or her lover which brings her to her unfortunate fate, her intense performance overlaps with the ballet and her personal fears and desires. This is where we see Vicky’s life and the fairy-tale overlap, the orchestra and the dancers are accompaniments to her personal story.
Surrealism creeps into the dance, cutting off the shackles of reality and embracing the full fantastical vision. Before we know it, Vicky falls into a Dali-like setting, she dances alone against painted backdrops – a dreamlike setting that is reminiscent of what we may see when we shut our eyes and let our thoughts flow with colour and movement. Pressburger and Powell creating this is impressive enough, but to do it in 1948 under a studio that specialised in B movies makes it even more special. It reminds us of the endless possibilities film can give us, especially when it’s dipping into another form. The camera takes the hand of the stage, and we see angles, concepts and points of view that would have only been through the eyes of the dancer.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
As the scheming and jealous ridden ballet company head Boris Lermontov states: ‘Don't forget, a great impression of simplicity can only be achieved by great agony of body and spirit.’ The Red Shoes is a tale of the burning struggle of choosing between a career or a lover, your art that breaks your feet or a life of comfort and ease. In one Vicky’s final scenes, after she decides to continue with the dance and leave Julian, we see the red shoes take over. Her expression of disbelief as she lets her feet back away from the stage is so striking. We follow her red shoes down the spiral staircase, off the balcony and onto the train tracks. This all happens so quickly, and it emulates the surrealism of the ballet performance. To me, this scene conveys the ultimate feeling of letting passion and the moment guide you despite all the noise. We see the whites of her eyes and we know something important is about to happen.
“The Red Shoes is the best portrayal of having your craft completely take over and the horrors that come with that.”
From here, we’re left to ponder if Vicky is dead or not. After Lermontov announces to the audience that she won’t be able to dance, the show goes on without her. We watch the empty spotlight eerily follow nothing, the supporting dancers twirling someone who isn’t there. This feels like the classic ‘things will go on even if you’re not around’, the bittersweet feeling of having the show go on even when the lead might be dead. One thing I wish was done differently in this film is that it should have ended after this last dance. We see Vicky and Julian once more, Vicky covered in blood and (somehow) in one piece after jumping in front of a train. This could have been to make the film extra PG, or maybe Vicky being injured to a degree where she can no longer dance is worse than death.
The Red Shoes is the best portrayal of having your craft completely take over and the horrors that come with that. Even if you’re a beautiful ballerina at the height of your career, jumping off a balcony in Monte Carlo is never too far away.
Words: Charlotte Amy Landrum
