THE RED SHOES

MICHAEL POWELL, EMERIC PRESSBURGER | UK | 1948 | 135 MIN | NR | 35 MM

This screening will feature live music 30 minutes prior to start time.

British filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (aka The Archers) were responsible for some of cinema’s most beautiful and imaginative work, but nothing compares to THE RED SHOES, their timeless story of backstage intrigue and deadly ambition set in Europe’s elite dance world. Shortly after joining the elite Ballet Lermontov, flame-haired ingénue Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) gets the role of a lifetime. She’ll dance the lead in “The Red Shoes,” a new ballet adapted from a haunting Hans Christian Andersen fable about a girl possessed by slippers that literally cause her to dance to death. It’s an eerie metaphor for Victoria’s own career, as she measures a burgeoning romance with a young composer (Marius Goring) against her desire to please the company’s demanding, possessive impresario (Anton Walbrook). This backstage intrigue is spellbinding, but the undoubted highlight of the film is its famous, 17-minute dance sequence, a hallucinatory marvel of virtuosic performance, surreal production design, and eye-popping Technicolor cinematography.

Cast: Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring, Léonide Massine

“The film is voluptuous in its beauty and passionate in its storytelling. You don’t watch it, you bathe in it.” –Roger Ebert