Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

4th type of British Film
1)Technicolor spectacles
2)These films are known for
    a)their intense use of color
    b)Their social and psychological boldness

The Red Shoes (1948)

1)Tells the story of Vicky (Moira Shearer) 
2) She put on a pair of red shoes and can't take them off (metaphorically)
3) The is torn between 2 men
   a)The impresario who gave her a career
   b)A young composer who wants her to quit dancing.

The Clip:
The following ballet sequence is perhaps the most iconic sequence in The Red Shoes. Author David Ehrenstein describes how Powell and Pressburger bring Andersen's tale to life, showing us more than a theater audience would see while still maintaining a connection with the point of view of a theater audience in the film (diegesis).

Lermontov's explanation to the composer: 

“The ballet of The Red Shoes is from a fairy tale by Hans Andersen. It is the story of a girl who’s devoured by an ambition to attend a dance in a pair of red shoes. She gets the shoes, goes to the dance. At first, all goes well and she’s very happy. At the end of the evening, she gets tired and wants to go home. But the red shoes are not tired. In fact, the red shoes are never tired. They dance her out into the streets. They dance her over the mountains and valleys, through fields and forests, through night and day. Time rushes by. Love rushes by. Life rushes by. But the red shoes dance on...

...The ballet certainly suggests that—for what we’re shown is not so much what’s going on on any imaginable stage but what’s roiling through Vicky’s mind as she dances. The audience is never seen, and we, the film audience, see more than anyone in a theater ever would. Not just in terms of an unobstructed, up-close view of the dance, but inside Vicky’s mind as Lermontov and Julian take turns partnering her while she dances through make-believe carnivals, ballrooms, deserts, and cloudy skies with pieces of cellophane falling, along with humans, as she drives ever onward toward obliteration.

The ballet is a kind of magic, psychodramatic tableau vivant. The Andersen story is enacted in it, but also the conflict among Vicky, Lermontov, and Craster. Fantasy and reality intermingle right from the start, when the shoemaker puts the ballet slippers on the ground and they stand by themselves, until Vicky suddenly, and quite magically, leaps into them. As the ballet progresses, color and atmosphere become as important as dance steps—especially when the gaiety of the initial moments gives way to despair and horror. Cardiff’s lush, textured cinematography works hand in hand with Heckroth’s production designs, as a public square becomes a carnival, a nightscape of monkey-headed streetwalkers, an empty ballroom, and an even emptier desert. Strangest of all is one long shot where we see the girl pirouetting in the foreground while in the background dancers appear to be worshipping a grotesque, seemingly living mask that hangs on a stone wall. Offstage, things are worse, as the action builds to the wrenching scene where Craster and Lermontov demand she choose between them—which she clearly cannot."

The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948):

Ballet Sequence we saw in class - Click Here

Review of Film - Click Here

I had heard in interviews that Scorsese saw this when he was about 7 and it was a huge influence on him. 

Here is an article where he discusses that Click Here

Article title why is The Red Shows one of the most beautiful films of all time Click Here