Friday, February 1, 2013

The Red Shoes (1948)

This is the first movie in my 28 Days of Romance movie challenge, where through the month of February, I will be watching the top 28 unseen-by-me romance movies on Flickchart. As of this writing, The Red Shoes is at #96 on the global Flickchart rankings.

IMDb plot summary: A young ballet dancer is torn between the man she loves and her pursuit to become a prima ballerina.
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook and Marius Goring.

The story in this movie is all right, the romance is sweet but pretty forced... the one thing that elevates this film into something lovely is the beautiful dancing. It integrates the dancing into the story marvelously, letting the two influence and validate each other. Take out the extended ballet sequences and there's nothing that special about this movie, but with it, it becomes something very unique and interesting and sad. 3.5 stars.

Flickchart: #580, below sex, lies, and videotape and above Hard Candy.

2 comments:

Joel Gunz said...

Michael Powell was one of the few directors that Alfred Hitchcock deeply respected and admired. They were both Brits who built their chops in the silent era. :)

Hannah K said...

I can absolutely see a similarity between Powell and Hitchcock, now that you mention it.