This was the first film by directors Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger that I saw, and personally I didn't really like it that much. Later I saw A Matter of Life and Death and was blown away by its brilliance, but for me, The Red Shoes just didn't make enough of a connection. The Red Shoes is a very emotionless film, a film that revolves more around style and film techniques than story, a very sad fact as the film could have been one of the best ever if it had, had just a little more to do with the character's lives and emotions. I just didn't buy the predicament that Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) and the writer Julian Craster (Marius Goring) found themselves in; their love just didn't transfer well enough for me to feel that bothered at the end. The performances (with the exception of Anton Walbrook) where underwritten and not all that well performed, but if the film has a saving grace, then it has to be the dance of the red shoes sequence, if only the film had had more ballet in it I might have been able to give this film a higher vote, but alas no. This is the only real dance number in the film. That said it's still one of the greatest scenes I've ever seen, with Jack Cardiff's amazing use of colour and angles. Not a great film, but it has enough beauty in twenty minutes that some films lack in a two-hour running time, for that the film gets 7/10.
Review of The Red Shoes
