Julian Craster (Marius Goring) is a young composer attending a performance by Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook)'s ballet troupe, when he is shocked to discover that his instructor stole movements of his composition and passed them off as his own. Lermontov is bemused by Craster's accusations, but rather than advise revenge, he offers Julian a position as resident composer, and assigns him an adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's The Red Shoes for the next season. During a social function, Lermontov is approached by Lady Neston (Irene Browne), who asks him to assess her niece, Victoria Page (Moira Shearer), an up and coming ballerina. Lermontov is unimpressed by the request, but the fiery dedication of Page to a local performance of Swan Lake sways him, and when the troupes prima ballerina Boronskaja (Ludmilla Tchérina) leaves to marry, he offers her the lead in Craster's The Red Shoes. Unfortunately for Boris, Julian and Victoria have developed a relationship of their own, something Lermontov finds antithetical to "perfection" in dance...What has always fascinated me about The Red Shoes is the fact that Victoria, despite being the subject of the film's promotional materials, appearing on the cover of Criterion's DVD and Blu-Ray release, and generally being the focus of everyone's attention in the film, is never the central character. The film alternates between Julian Craster and Boris Lermontov - with Julian dominating the opening of the film until the focus moves almost exclusively to Boris in the second half - with Victoria appearing as the object of their dueling ideologies. Craster meets Lermontov precisely because his work was stolen, yet he then "steals" Victoria away from Boris until the maestro "steals" her back, forcing an ultimatum of love or ambition.
The film is less about romance than manipulation: Victoria Page is merely a pawn of both men, always being directed, described to, suggested to, and being forced to make life altering decisions. Her own perspective is largely ignored; there are hints that Page has doubts about her abilities, but they are generally shrugged off by Boris, Julian, and choreographer / performer Ljubov (Léonide Massine) - in one notable scene, Victoria complains that she cannot dance to the tempo Julian wrote, and he only later acquiesces and agrees to try it at her pace. Their love is discussed but swept into the background as the attention shifts toward Lermontov, who shows only disdain for his dancers leaving for "love," the ultimate corruption of potential in his mind.
A product of post-war England, The Red Shoes is a globe trotting affair, following the troupe through London, Paris, Monte Carlo, and New York (although the film was not shot in America, the other locations figure prominently into the story), and its approach is easy to mistake as "pure" melodrama - Victoria and Julian certainly appear to be the star-crossed lovers, and Boris the spurned member of their triangle, and when he wins Page back, Julian abandons his debut as a composer to try to win her back. There are moments of romance, of beautiful vistas and professions of amour, and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's soft focus photography might fool one into thinking that The Red Shoes is merely a romance set to ballet.
While Shearer, Goring, and Walbrook are all riveting in their roles, the real star of The Red Shoes is the performance of the title ballet itself: a seemingly impossible, "how could a live audience see what the film audience is seeing" whirlwind of shifting imagery that showcases the talents of Moira Shearer and Léonide Massine. The performance, which is the central set piece of the film, plays out Hans Christian Anderson's tale - surrounding a young dancer who is sold a pair of red shoes and is unable to stop dancing until she dies - with transitions only possible in film, foreshadowing the rest of the film in an oblique manner.
Without spoiling the film too much, the ballet bleeds over into reality, with an ending that leaves audiences questioning what actually happened to Victoria. Did she choose her fate, or did the shoes? A visual trick carried over from the ballet sequence occurs immediately before the climax, and the ambiguity with which The Archers (Powell and Pressburger's nickname and production company) handle the film's final moments elevates The Red Shoes from a fine film to a classic, one that deftly avoids the simple classification of "melodrama." Too much is bubbling under the surface to merely take The Red Shoes at face value, and its influence on films to follow (from Martin Scorsese to Darren Aronofsky) is tangible to this day.
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