The Red Shoes: Turner Classic Movie British Film Guide 9780755604265, 9781845110710

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Illustrations

i.

Jack Cardiff, whose genius gave The Red Shoes life.

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2.

Emeric Pressburger (left) and Michael Powell (right) scouting for locations in Monte Carlo.

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3.

Sir Thomas Beecham (left) and Brian Easdale (centre) work on the recording of The Red Shoes ballet.

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4.

Hein Heckroth working on the set designs for The Red Shoes.

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5.

Robert Helpmann as Ivan Boleslawsky (left), Leonide Massine as Grischa Ljubov (centre), and Moira Shearer as Vicky Page (right).

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6.

The girl tries to go home to her mother but the shoes take control.

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7.

Dancing through the stalls of the fair long after everyone has departed.

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8.

Vicky falls under the spell of Lermontov (Anton Walbrook).

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9.

The girl is offered the false hope of salvation by the shoemaker.

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10. T h e final spasms of life and possession as the girl falls into the arms of her former fiance.

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11.

O n through the lands of nightmare and fantasy.

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12.

The girl and her fiance in the fantasy ballroom scene.

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13.

Hein Heckroth's set designs for the ballroom scene.

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14.

T h e realisation of the ballroom scene.

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15.

Hein Heckroth's set designs for the fair scene.

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16. The girl (Moira Shearer) is captivated by the shoes and must dance.

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17.

The danse infernale showing the girl's enslavement to the shoemaker.

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18.

Grischa (Massine) congratulates Vicky (Shearer) on her success in the opening night of The Red Shoes.

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19. Robert Helpmann and Moira Shearer on set with the specially mounted Technicolor camera.

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20. Shearer, Helpmann and Massine rehearse, watched by Michael Powell.

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Acknowledgements and Introductory Note

The Red Shoes is one of the high points of British cinema and has inspired and enthralled people across the world. Many a little girl has seen it and dreamt of becoming a ballet dancer, Royal Ballet prima ballerina Darcy Bussell among them. Powell and Pressburger's celebrated riot of colour, music and dance with its strange, brilliant exploration of ambition, art and genius was not, however, an instant success. Arthur Rank was dismayed by the film and fully expected to make a substantial loss. This book aims to explore the production, the nature of the plot and the film's subsequent legacy. In order to disturb the flow of the text as little as possible, notes have been used only sparingly; however, a full list of sources used can be found at the end of the book. This book is a work of passion. I love The Red Shoes. I have loved it since I first saw it many years ago when I was absolutely stunned by its daring, frenzied nature. Jeffrey Richards and Philippa Brewster's invitation to write about the film was therefore an honour and a privilege, and allowed me to fulfil an ambition. I would like to thank them both for supporting this project. The members of the Issues in Film History seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, and Mark Glancy in particular, have also been very supportive, and their ideas and input have been greatly appreciated. I would also like to thank Liz Mansfield for sharing with me her enthusiasm for the film. My wife, Jacqui, has, as always, been of immense help and has now become an equally big fan of the film. As ever, my parents and brother have been important throughout the gestation of this project, and many thanks go to them. Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to my own ballerinas, my nieces, Chloe and Phoebe, who are now discovering the joys of dance and the glory of The Red Shoes.

Film Credits

THE RED SHOES Production

Company

Producers Assistant Producer Director Assistant Director Screenplay Photography Camera Operator Editor Art Director Assistant Art Director Painting Specialist Painting Scenic Artist Music Red Shoes ballet Red Shoes ballet Part of the Shoemaker Length Running Time UK Premiere US Premiere

T h e Archers (via Rank, Independent Producers) Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger George Busby Michael Powell Sydney Streeter Emeric Pressburger Jack Cardiff (Technicolor) Christopher Challis Reginald Mills Hein H e c k r o t h A r t h u r Lawson Ivor Beddoes Joseph Natanson Alfred Roberts Brian Easdale (composed, arranged and conducted) conducted by Sir T h o m a s Beecham choreographed by Robert Helpmann created and danced by Leonide Massine 12,075 ft 134 minutes 20 July 1948 22 October 1948

CAST Julian Craster Terry Ike Balletomane

Marius G o r i n g Jean Short G o r d o n Littman Julia L a n g

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Balletomane's friend Grischa Ljubov Boris Lermontov Professor Palmer Sir Livingstone Montague Dimitri Lady Neston Victoria Page Irena Boronskaja George, stage-door keeper Ivan Boleslawsky Sergei Ratov Lord Oldham Madame Rambert Gladys, Vicky's friend M. Boudin M. Rideaut Vicky's dresser Boisson Doorman

Bill Shine Leonide Massine A n t o n Walbrook Austin Trevor Esmond Knight Eric Berry Irene Browne Moira Shearer Ludmilla Tcherina Jerry Verno Robert Helpmann Albert Bassermann D e r e k Elphinstone herself Joy Rawlins Marcel Poncin Michel Bazalgette Yvonne A n d r e H a y Petrie Richard G e o r g e

In watching The Red Shoes the viewer is subjected to a rollercoaster ride. The experience is bewildering because so many of the conventions seem orthodox, but these conventions are then suddenly given new twists, disorienting and, occasionally, baffling to its audiences. Although convinced that cinema should entertain, Powell and Pressburger were equally convinced that film was an art form in its own right and that cinema was a medium of creative and imaginative expression. Audiences were there to be challenged while they were being entertained. The Red Shoes is a film that expanded the boundaries of cinematic invention and created unforgettable images that have left a lasting legacy on cinema from Singin* in the Rain to Kundun and American Beauty. Kevin Macdonald, biographer of Emeric Pressburger, has noted that: 'Few movies have gripped the psyche of a generation as forcefully, and few have been as influential both inside and outside the world of film.' Yet this film was largely ignored on its first release in Britain, and began its rightful ascent to fame only after it was discovered in the US art-house circuits. At the time of its release the British press panned Powell and Pressburger for their supposedly ill-disciplined and downright unBritish efforts. The national genius in film-making was supposedly the realistic and documentary, and their work had long since strayed from such conventions. However, scholars and commentators have for too long rested on the cliche that as artistic prophets for cinema Powell and Pressburger were shunned in their own land. Such an interpretation relies on the use of a restricted range of sources, particularly the critics of the highbrow press. The responses of the British popular press and box-office figures

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appear to reveal a slightly more complex story showing that the British film-going public was happy enough to watch Powell and Pressburger movies when given the chance.

M A K I N G THE RED

SHOES

The Red Shoes had a long gestation. In 1934, Alexander Korda, later the employer of both Powell and Pressburger, flushed with the success of his The Private Life of Henry VIII, announced that he was going to make a biopic about the great Russian dancer Nijinsky, starring Paul Muni. T h e project never got off the ground but Korda kept the idea of a ballet story in his mind. T h e new obsession of his life seemed to be his inspiration. Korda had a vision of Merle Oberon as a ballerina and, in 1937, began making plans for a film to be based around her looks — he could hardly base it on her dancing ability. Indeed, Oberon was sent off for instruction. It wasn't a particularly encouraging experience, and Korda began to think of using a double for the dance sequences. Pressburger had a hand in the planning of the story, but just as it looked as if the project might gather speed, Korda, with his usual restlessness, turned to something else which was to preoccupy him for a long time: The Thief of Bagdad (1940). At this point the story leaps forward a few years. Pressburger was keen to acquire the rights to the screenplay he had written for Korda and had been negotiating with him over a price. In 1946, after five years of wrangling, the Archers managed to acquire the project from Korda for £9,000, which was four times the price they had paid Rumer Godden's representatives for the rights to her novel, Black Narcissus. Powell and Pressburger's willingness to spend such a sum may be regarded as a good indicator of how seriously the project was viewed. T h e Archers, although a completely independent team, were in fact bankrolled by and ultimately responsible to Arthur Rank and it was under his remote supervision that the film of The Red Shoes now started to come together. Rank was eventually persuaded to see the merits of the project, believing it would provide his long awaited break into the American market, and permission was given for production to commence.

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i. Jack Cardiffy whose genius gave The Red Shoes life.

Concerned that his two most creative but also most mercurial independent producers might lack discipline, Rank sought assurances from the Archers that filming would be completed on schedule and to budget. Filming started in June 1947 in Paris, was scheduled

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to take fifteen weeks and cost £300,000. T h e production proved a happy time for most of the cast and crew. O n the first day of shooting Michael Powell told the company: 'We'll be doing things that haven't been done before, we'll have to work very hard — but I know it's going to be worth it.'1 For many it was the chance to visit some favourite and exotic places at Rank's expense. Jack Cardiff recalled the thrill of being zoomed down to Monte Carlo in Michael Powell's open-topped Bentley. Days of hard work in the south of France were more than compensated for by the chance to indulge in lunchtime swimming in the Mediterranean and dinner parties in Villefranche. Creating the effects for The Red Shoes demanded much from both cast and crew, and the Archers agreed to give the company a fortnight's holiday in September. Many appreciated this gesture, while considering it impractical. 2 Filming soon overran and took twenty-four weeks in total, which must have severely troubled Rank, and caused him even greater disquiet when the final budget was calculated at £551,927. Facing massive losses, particularly over poor returns from American distributions, Rank was determined to cut costs and was aided in this quest by John Davis, his chief accountant. Davis did not share Rank's enthusiasm for prestige films and had very little time for a project with such high artistic aspirations, a quality which appeared to guarantee box-office failure in his mind, and agreed to the extension required by the Archers only after he forced a £10,000 cut in their salaries, made up by an increased percentage of the final profits. 3 W h e n Rank saw the film for the first time he is reported to have gone white and walked out of the room without passing any sort of comment to Pressburger who was representing the Archers. It is now necessary to turn to the wider production history in order to find out exactly what it was that scared Rank so much. W h y should a glorious Technicolor production, so full of vivid colours, so much an antidote to the depressing nature of post-war austerity Britain with its amazing escapism, have been such a jolt to the great J. Arthur Rank? W h e n Michael Powell directed his first film, The Crowded Hours, in 1931, he was by no means a debutant. He had entered the industry in the 1920s, during which time he gained a considerable knowledge of

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film-making. After service in the Great War, Powell's father entered the hotel business in France. This decision placed a considerable strain on his parents' marriage and they divorced in the early 1920s. By this point Michael was a devoted cinema fan, and it was while on holiday at his father's hotel in the south of France that he gained his first introduction to the business, as his father persuaded an MGM unit working on location to allow Michael on to the set. The experience convinced Michael that he should not return to his old life in England and he inveigled himself into the production unit. He worked with Rex Ingram and his MGM team in the south of France for the next few years before returning to England in 1928 where he encountered Alfred Hitchcock and obtained employment on the set of Blackmail. By this stage Powell had been a 'maid of all work', a stills photographer, actor, plot writer and second unit director. Having gained such a wealth of experience he was well placed to exploit the opportunities thrown up by the so-called Quota Act of 1927 which led to a boom in British film production. Fearful of the effect of foreign, particularly American, competition on the British film industry, the government introduced what was in effect a protectionist measure guaranteeing cinematic distribution and exhibition of a certain number of British-made films each year. Established British companies such as Gaumont-British largely continued production as normal. However, it also led to the creation of a host of new studios determined to cash in by making cheap products, 'quota-quickies', for an assured market. At the same time, the big Hollywood companies opened British operations in order to get round the Act, often by the production of 'quota-quickies'. Powell began his directorial career with The Crowded Hours and continued working on quota-quickies until 1934 when he made what might be called his first 'real' film, Red Ensign. Set in a Clydeside shipbuilding yard, it told the story of an industrial dispute and the struggle against exploitative capitalism. Although the film is one dedicated to paternal consensus, the real hero of the film being a noble yard owner, David Barr (Leslie Banks), who attempts to treat his workers fairly and engineer a good deal for all British shipbuilders, the film provided something rare in British 1930s cinema — a glimpse of the reality of British working-

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2. Emeric Pressburger (left) and Michael Powell (right) scouting for locations in Monte Carlo.

class life and conditions.4 Four years later Powell made The Edge of the World (1938), which provides the first signs of his mature work. Shot on location on the island of Foula in the Shetlands, the plot was based on the true story of the removal of the population of St Kilda in 1930. The wild, ruggedly beautiful landscapes of the island and the impact of this challenging geography on the character and culture of the islanders are at the core of the film. These themes of culture, landscape and character became essential ingredients of much of Powell's future work. At this point Powell came to the attention of Alexander Korda. Determined to take on Hollywood at its own game, this emigre Hungarian film producer and director firmly believed that the British film industry needed to win popularity, influence and ultimately financial reward by making high-quality films with strong plots and casts. Starting with the success of The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Korda had gained a good deal of critical acclaim and boxoffice success, but the British film industry still lagged some way behind Hollywood and the British cinema-going public retained

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its allegiance to American products.5 Undeterred, Korda pressed on and retained his interest in the best available talent. Initially, he asked Powell to start work on a film set in exotic Burma, but this project foundered and he took the fateful step of introducing him to another Hungarian emigre, Emeric Pressburger, pairing them for the espionage thriller, The Spy in Black. Emeric Pressburger had arrived in Britain in 1935 completing a most cosmopolitan tour of Europe. A thorough, if slightly eccentric, education left him with the ambition to be a civil engineer, a desire that was ruined by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He drifted to Prague where he began German lessons which eventually led him to Germany itself. Increasing financial difficulties played havoc with his continued education and he ended up drifting rather aimlessly around Berlin. Almost in desperation he tried his hand at short-story writing and managed to get his work published in the newspapers. Having honed his technique, Pressburger acquired the skill to break into the early days of sound film production in Berlin. Although past its real heyday by the late 1920s, Ufa still had a magical appeal and Pressburger was soon at the heart of its creative life. Pressburger's keen sympathy with the nature and discipline of the novelist infused his approach. He believed in strict attention to the written dialogue and the careful establishment of mood, tempo and plot. Unfortunately, due to internal wrangling at the studio, Pressburger's name did not appear on the credits of Billy Wilder's Emil and the Detectives (1931), a hugely successful children's film he had largely scripted. Life among the bohemian artists of Berlin and surrounded by those who remembered it before 1914 later provided some of the details for The Red Shoes and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). With the rise of the Nazi party to power, life in Berlin soon became uncomfortable for the Jewish Pressburger and he moved on once more, this time to Paris. At first work was hard to come by, although there were some compensations to be found in the society of yet more avant-garde artists and fellow emigres. Pressburger then broke into the French film industry and resumed his job of producing screenplays, scenarios and treatments. He worked on an eclectic range of subjects, all of which helped to refine his trade and insight. Then, in July 1935, he went to London in

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order to work on the English-language version of La Vie Parsienne. He decided to remain in Britain, probably because at that stage he intended ultimately to move on to Hollywood. By the mid-i93os London had collected a large number of emigre film talents, and their skills were in demand in a period of expansion for the British film industry. Within a short space of time he was working again. He soon came to the attention of Korda who invited him to work on The Spy in Black. Released in August 1939, The Spy in Black had the double advantages of being both topical and a good film. Set during the Great War, it tells the story of a German spy who tries to infiltrate Scapa Flow and ascertain the secrets of the Royal Navy. Another emigre talent, Conrad Veidt, expertly played Captain Hardt, the German spy. Using Pressburger's thoughtful script, Veidt's performance inspired a fair amount of sympathy for Hardt, as it becomes obvious that he is a man of honour who has little taste for the dirty work of espionage. A great box-office hit — it was still running at Christmas 1939 — it combined Powell's visual flair and attention to cinematic detail with Pressburger's equally precise sense of effective scripting and timing. 6 Often referred to as flamboyant cinema artists and showmen, this description of Powell and Pressburger is only partly true. T h e y were able to create their artistic masterpieces only because of their excellent, highly practical, grip on their trade. Powell's long apprenticeship in the British film industry gave him not only the requisite trade skills but also the chance to witness and assess the range of talent available. Bill Paton, Powell's fix-all assistant for many years, and Erwin Hillier, cinematographer on The Silver Fleet (1943), A Canterbury Tale (1944) and I Know Where I'm Going (1945), were first encountered during the making of The Edge of the World. Bill Wall, the gaffer, and his team were discovered on the set of The Thief of Bagdad (1940), as was the legendary cinematographer Georges Perinal, and, while at Gaumont British, he worked with the inspirational and formidable emigre German set designer, Alfred Junge. As the Archers, Powell and Pressburger made maximum use of this knowledge, moulding and occasionally shuffling a team of regulars on their productions. *

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The outbreak of war led to significant upheaval in British cinema. As soon as war broke out the state took on vast new powers via the Defence of the Realm Act. Under its auspices nearly every aspect of life came under state surveillance and jurisdiction. Cinema, as the most important mass communicator, was regarded as a vital weapon and the newly established Ministry of Information began work on thrashing out a formula for the production of film propaganda. After many false starts and much drifting, the new Ministry established a manifesto for the British film industry in early 1940. Wanting to avoid nationalisation of the industry, and yet wanting to monitor every aspect of its output, the Ministry established a code of collaboration. Film-makers and studios were encouraged to submit their plans for inspection, the Ministry would then decide whether the film would assist the war effort or contravene any aspect of the national interest before allowing production to commence. As the state controlled the supply of film stock, had taken over much studio space, and could negotiate with the armed forces for the release of serving actors and the loan of any equipment or extras, there was little point trying to evade these procedures and on the whole the British film industry reacted positively. The government also presented the industry with a propaganda agenda. It wanted films to promote what Britain was fighting for and the sacrifices necessary to achieve victory. Cinema was required to show British life and character — * showing our independence, toughness of fibre, sympathy with the under-dog'; British ideas and institutions — 'ideals such as freedom, and institutions such as parliamentary government'; German ideals and institutions in recent history — 'Pan-German ideas from Bismarck onwards ... the activities of the Gestapo stressing, as more easily credible, the sinister rather than the sadistic aspect, but the Germans should also be shown as making absurd errors of judgement'. 7 Armed with this agenda and catapulted suddenly to heights of national importance and popularity few could have imagined in the 1930s, the British film industry went to work. During the Second World War British cinema achieved great things. It managed to entertain and inform and British films became genuinely and consistently popular for the first time. Having finally succeeding in connecting with the British people, the British film

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industry unsurprisingly tried to perfect still further the blend found in this winning formula. T h e most obvious lesson appeared to be that the British liked melodrama and romance, but particularly when they were based on 'real life' scenarios and reflected the reality of the world around them. Highly successful films such as The Way to the Stars (1945), In Which We Serve (1942) and The First of the Few (1942) provide good examples of this genre. A neat merger had taken place between the 1930s' documentarists and the mainstream commercial film industry to create this uniquely British form, which reached its apogee in the output of Ealing Studios. However, British cinema did create an alternative mixture, the so-called Gainsborough Gothic. As Sue Harper has shown, these films were far removed from the sober realism of Ealing. High-blown fantasy, often based on historical themes, in which bodices were ripped, bosoms heaved, whips lashed and breeches squeaked at the strain, created a heady brew. Young females in particular were drawn to this genre. In a world of rationing and blackout, Gainsborough Gothic offered visual versions of pulp historical fiction.8 Audiences were offered the escapism of wild romance and lusty athleticism. Somewhere between these two poles of documentary reality and melodramatic fantasy lay the work of Powell and Pressburger. Powell and Pressburger made nine films during the course of the war: Contraband (1940), 49th Parallel (1941), One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942), The Silver Fleet (produced, but not directed), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Canterbury Tale, I Know Where I'm Going and A Matter of Life and Death (1946). All of these films are of a high quality, three of them are masterpieces (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Canterbury Tale and A Matter of Life and Death) and most were box-office successes. Working together with a zealous intensity they established themselves as masters of certain key themes — human desires and aspirations and the impact of history and landscape on those desires. Fused into a magical union, in the spring of 1941 Powell and Pressburger took the step of forming their own company under the name of the Archers, and 49th Parallel introduced cinema-goers to what has now become their world-famous logo, the butt. From this production onwards all Archers' films were announced by a red, white and blue archery

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3. Sir Thomas Beecham (left) and Brian Easdale (centre) work on the recording of The Red Shoes ballet. butt (perceptible even in black and white) already pierced by eight arrows, into which a ninth arrow thuds and quivers. Britain's past and present appeared to be embodied in this distinctive image for, as one critic remarked, it implied 'the age of the English longbow and, perhaps, the more topical image of the RAF roundel'. No one is quite sure who conceived this image or why, but Pressburger certainly associated it with his star sign, the centaur archer, Sagittarius.9 In January 1942, they gained the chance to experiment and express themselves fully thanks to an agreement with J. Arthur Rank, probably the most important producer and distributor in the British film industry. Like Korda, Rank knew that the way to make the British film industry financially sustainable was to make a profit in America. Following Korda's strategy, he too believed the best plan was to produce a clutch of high-quality films that could be exported while making lower-cost films solely for the domestic market. The Archers and Rank struck a significant deal. Rank offered a film-by-film contract that promised the Archers 25 per cent of the net profit and his financial backing for their

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projects but without stifling their artistic creativity by leaving them relatively independent. T h e Archers used that independence to notorious effect when they created The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Radically, and disgracefully, re-edited after its first release, particularly in the USA, the film was consigned to an ill-deserved limbo from 1945 until it was reconstructed in 1983. In the meantime all that lingered of its reputation was the controversy surrounding its production and original release. Ironically, the furore accompanying the film was largely because so many people misunderstood it completely. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp follows the career of Major-General Clive Candy from his youthful years in the army, when his high spirits led him into a diplomatic scrape, through to his old age by which time he has become a dinosaur seemingly unable to remember his former self. At the time many interpreted it as a deliberate swipe at the army and an insult to its officers and men. Powell and Pressburger certainly set out with the intention of challenging the huntin', fishin', shootin' type of officer, but this was offset by the conviction that the armed forces had plenty of talent and energy which simply needed channelling into the right areas. Few people appeared to appreciate this distinction at the time, and Winston Churchill, among many others, raged against the film. W h e n these layers are stripped away and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is studied more closely, it quickly becomes apparent that the core lies well beyond these surface issues. This emotionally and intellectually complex film was, in fact, given free publicity and it is doubtful whether it would have interested the public quite so much had it been ignored, a point shrewdly made at the time by Brendan Bracken, the Minister of Information. 10 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp is actually a celebration of British values. Candy's fairness, devotion to duty, good faith, sense of honour and inability to express his feelings are all qualities the foreign-born Pressburger admired and respected in his inarticulate hosts, and were equally well loved by Powell. Candy's German friend, Kretschmar-Schuldorff, almost acts as Pressburger's mouthpiece as he comes gradually to appreciate and understand the English character. T h e Archers did not condemn Candy out of

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hand or once and for all; rather, the film states that his values are luxuries that cannot be indulged in at the present, in the middle of an apocalyptic struggle against enemies completely oblivious of such civilised niceties. Running alongside this theme is a love story, or a love obsession might be a better word. Candy falls in love with an Englishwoman, Edith, as a young man but loses out to a German officer, Kretschmar-Schuldorff. In later years he meets a woman very similar to Edith and marries her. They live a blissful life which is cut short by her sudden death. When war breaks out in 1939, Candy is an old man but remains in the army and finds himself a driver who is the double of Edith and his wife. By this stage his intentions are more paternal than amorous, but his spaniel-like devotion to a particular image is both intriguing and warming in its simplicity and lack of artifice. By the end of the film Candy is redundant and alone, but he is not a figure of ridicule or irrelevance. As he comes proudly to attention and salutes the troops marching past, the strains of 'British Grenadiers' crash out and the camera pans in on Candy's face. The famous old march and his face are both relics and symbols of Britain's proud past, its values and its fortitude, and they both inform the present. It is an intensely patriotic and moving ending. Powell and Pressburger used an excellent combination of talents to make the film, not all of it first choice. Originally, Laurence Olivier and Wendy Hiller were scheduled to play the leading roles. For various reasons neither was able to take up the offers and so Roger Livesey and Deborah Kerr were approached. Livesey, a regular on the London stage, had made a handful of performances on film, most notably in The Drum (1938), made the most of his break and turned in an excellent performance. Aided by his husky voice and excellent work in the make-up department, he expertly made the transition from headstrong young officer to gouty old gentleman. Opposite him, Deborah Kerr produced an equally good performance playing all three women in Candy's life, cleverly giving all three certain similarities and mannerisms as well as differences. Anton Walbrook, who made such a deep impact as Peter the Hutterite in 49th Parallel, provided an excellent foil for Livesey and Kerr. He brought out every nuance of Kretschmar-Schuldorff's character shaped by the buffeting effect of history and experience on Germans between 1900 and 1939,

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4. Hein Heckroth working on set designs for The Red Shoes. from his initial boyish naivete through the arrogance forged by the shame of defeat as a prisoner-of-war to the wise, if tired, old man who has learnt to appreciate British national character. T h e look of the film was given an added impact by the use of rare Technicolor stock; colour gave the film a sense of immediacy and relevance to the contemporary situation — a quality it may well have lacked given its elaborate flashback structure had it been shot in black-and-white. T h e hugely experienced cameraman Georges Perinal was responsible for the cinematography. He had worked with Rene Clair in the 1920s before moving to London at the request of Alexander Korda. Employed on some of Korda's most prestigious films, including The Private Life of Henry VIII and Things to Come (1936), he made the transition to Technicolor mastery while working with him shooting The Drum, The Four Feathers (1939) and The Thief of Bagdad. Underpinning Perinal's work were Junge 's set designs. A Prussian perfectionist, Junge re-created the cafe life of Hohenzollern Berlin, the trenches of the Western Front and a gentleman's 'den' with flair and accuracy. With The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp the Archers team marked its transition to full maturity.

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Powell and Pressburger then wanted to replicate the strange, enchanting chemistry created by the combination of Roger Livesey and Deborah Kerr in their next film, A Canterbury Tale. These plans were never realised due to Kerr's commitments to MGM, having been snapped up after her performance in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, and Livesey's reservations over the character of Thomas Colpepper. Now celebrated as one of their finest achievements, A Canterbury Tale was the first box-office failure of the Archers and it stumped utterly both the public and the critics. Although the film's stunning vision of Canterbury and its surrounding countryside has led to it being labelled as Powell's most personal work, he believed there was far more of Pressburger in it. By telling the tale of the innocent outsider looking for the heart of England, the meaning and weight of its history, the bonds of a society shaped by a peculiar religion, Pressburger was perhaps providing an essay in autobiography. A Canterbury Tale was certainly the Archers' most complex plot. Replicating the spirit and structure of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, it told the story of four modern pilgrims, two of whom are consciously seeking spiritual blessings and two of whom are subconsciously drawn to them. It is a story of epiphanies and awakenings told in the depths of wartime Britain's severe utilitarianism. Complicating this already deep-laid plot is the character of Thomas Colpepper, the Squire, JP and Mayor of Chillingbourne, a name forged from a composite of typical Kent towns and modelled on Chartham and Chilham, two villages just outside Canterbury where many of the exteriors were shot. Colpepper has an obsession with English history, its landscape and values, and is determined to communicate this to as many people as possible. Fearful of a materialist and exploitative future, he sees salvation only in remembering the roots of the race. In order to ensure audiences for his lectures he suppresses all other activities in the village through the expedient of stalking females in the blackout and emptying tins of glue over their hair. This element rather shocked audiences and critics at the time and it has retained its disturbing edge infused as it is with misogynistic overtones and the darkly sexual implications of glue. (Colpepper also foreshadows Lermontov: obsessive, convinced of his own righteousness, taste

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and judgement, he is prepared to do almost anything to realise his vision.) A challenging, sophisticated and ravishingly beautiful film, it is now celebrated and appreciated for its sheer ambition and complexity. In 1944, in a Britain looking towards victory and enthused by the 'bread and butter' issues contained in the Beveridge Report on the future of state welfare provision, it was hardly likely to strike a deep chord. However, A Canterbury Tale did conform roughly to the Ministry of Information's agenda, it was a why we fight film and celebrated Britain's allies reworked into a remarkable filmic tapestry. Erwin Hillier's excellent cinematography created a paean to the English countryside in black-and-white. He captured shafts of sunlight falling through mullion windows and shadows cast across the downs by full-bellied clouds. Frank Newbould's famous wartime series of posters, 'Your Britain: Fight for it Now!', is invoked by the photography. Hillier's work was complemented and enhanced by Junge's equally wonderful set designs, particularly Sergeant Sweet's room at the 'Hand in G l o v e ' inn. T h e y are perfect expressions of the Tudorbethan, leaving the viewer almost able to smell dusty ancient timbers and old-fashioned bees' wax polish. T h e final sequence in Canterbury Cathedral, shot in the studios at Pinewood in a perfect replica set, leaves the viewer deeply moved. T h e four pilgrims have found their journey's end, and are about to commence on new quests with the blessings imparted by the mystical city of Canterbury and its cathedral. At the same time a regiment is leaving for the front and is sent off with a rousing church parade in the cathedral which culminates with 'Onward Christian Soldiers'. T h e message is unmistakable: the Anglo-Saxon race will march hand-in-hand to victory over the enemies of mankind inspired by God and their racial inheritance. 11 Having bamboozled their audience with A Canterbury Tale, Powell and Pressburger's next creation was the wonderful, whimsical romantic comedy, / Know Where I'm Going. Often dismissed as a piece of fluff, the film reveals the imprint of the Archers in its deep sense of location, history, tradition and strong personalities. Life in the Scottish islands was re-created with warmth and humour and set against the secretly developing passions of Torquil (Roger Livesey), Laird of Kiloran, and Joan (Wendy Hiller), a headstrong

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young woman with a very pronounced sense of managing her own destiny. It was a box-office hit and revealed that, apart from the odd slip, the British public and the Archers could, and did, walk along roughly the same path.12 Powell and Pressburger's next film, A Matter of Life and Death, can be identified as the first real step on the path to The Red Shoes. Like A Canterbury Tale, A Matter of Life and Death dealt with both everyday realities such as the randomness of life and death, the nature of human relationships in wartime, the Anglo-American alliance, and eternal spiritual questions about the heart and soul of humans through a storyline that was weird, wonderful and fantastic. The film concerns the lives of a young RAF pilot, Peter Carter (David Niven), and a young USAAF girl, June (Kim Hunter). Convinced that he has died, Carter at first confuses England with heaven. However, he finds that his miraculous survival has caused alarm bells to ring in heaven where he has failed to report. A 'conductor' is sent to retrieve him, but Carter refuses to go as he has by now fallen in love with June. This leads to an appeal and a heavenly courtroom inquiry. Fortunately, Peter wins his case and is allowed to start life again with June. This intensely imaginative tale mixed wartime propaganda themes with wild theatricality. More importantly in terms of the gestation of The Red Shoes, the film marked a distinct departure in terms of technique. The action alternates between heaven and earth and required a change from black-and-white to Technicolor to symbolise the transitions. It was Emeric Pressburger who came up with the brilliant idea of shooting the earth sequences in colour and heaven in black-and-white. This witty reversal of expectation was self-referentially used in the film when Marius Goring, playing the heavenly conductor, wistfully remarks on his return to earth, 'Aah, one is starved for Technicolor up there!' Jack Cardiff was the man who created the brilliant Technicolor effects, giving his experimental impulse full range. His approach to his work and craft meant that Cardiff was at the forefront of developments in colour cinematography. In giving him the job, the Archers had to take the difficult step of replacing Erwin Hillier, who had done such good work on both A Canterbury Tale and / Know Where I'm Going. Initially, the Archers offered the task jointly to Hillier and Cardiff, but Hillier

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declined leaving Cardiff to work alone. (As will be seen, a similar story unfolded at the start of The Red Shoes during Powell and Pressburger's deliberations over art direction and set design.) Hillier's departure allowed Cardiff the freedom to suggest improvements and impart his ideas. Clearly a dynamic and firm character, Cardiff had the personality and spirit to cope with Powell and achieve a constructive working partnership. Such harmony was not always the case on Archers' productions. Notoriously arrogant and insensitive to the feelings of others, one of Powell's thoroughly unpleasant characteristics was a hectoring approach to the cast and crew. According to many, he enjoyed pushing people as far as he could and wanted to see who could stand up to him. He respected those who snapped back, but mercilessly pursued those who crumpled. Those who put a positive gloss on this behaviour emphasise that it often helped to draw the best out of the team. However, others found it extremely insensitive and destructive: Ronald Neame, the cinematographer and director, refused to work with him for precisely this reason.13 Cardiff set to work with an excellent team including Geoff Unsworth as camera operator and Chris Challis as focus-puller. Transforming Powell and Pressburger's ideas into cinematic reality was not an easy task, and the most difficult was the seamless transition from colour to black-and-white. In order to avoid using cuts, Cardiff decided not to use black-and-white film at all. Instead, he worked entirely with Technicolor stock, simply shooting in monochrome and dyeing colours in and out. This allowed the beautiful and flawless transformation of a rose from dull black-and-white to glorious colour in one, simple magical moment. He also used a lemon filter in earthly daylight sequences when the heavenly conductor arrived which produced a far more yellowy effect than was obtained with the more usual amber filter. It created a magical, eerie effect denoting a transition from one state to another. Alfred Junge once again produced excellent sets including a vast matte painting of the constellations which eventually transforms into the heavenly courtroom. The greatest achievement was the moving staircase to heaven. Engine-driven and consisting of ioo broad steps, the staircase took three months to build and had to be lit very carefully. Yet another German worked on the costumes,

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5. Robert Helpmann as Ivan Boleslawsky (left), Leonide Massine as Grischa Ljubov (centre), andMoira Shearer as Vicky Page (right).

Hein Heckroth, as the Archers continued to acquire emigre talent for their team. The quality press was rather confused (yet again) by the latest offering from the Archers, but the general public and popular press loved it. The Daily Mail National Film Awards poll placed it fifth in the year's offerings. Revealing a much more catholic and eclectic taste than many British critics, the Mail and its readers ranked it only slightly below The Courtneys of Curort Street, Great Expectations, Odd Man Out and Jassy}4

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Having made a decisive move away from the mainstream of British cinema with A Matter of Life and Death, the Archers were not about to return to the fold. Their next project, an adaptation of Rumer Godden's novel, Black Narcissus, marked a significant development in the Powell and Pressburger relationship and filmmaking style. T h e Archers wanted it to be a 'composed' film. It is a term Powell stressed in his autobiography, and was one he had adopted from other film-makers. T h e composed film was a largely German invention and was one familiar to Pressburger from his Ufa days. Powell himself came to the concept via a Swiss—British production, Feher's Robber Symphony (1937).15 Powell's definition of the term meant something in which the visuals were in perfect harmony with the music to create a symphonic or operatic whole. It marked a desire to make films that not only looked beautiful, but also sounded beautiful and transported the viewer into an entirely different world. He wanted his films to draw the viewer along by images and music as well as dialogue which would challenge and provoke them, and to stimulate the eye by their sheer visual bravado. It was a bold and innovative manifesto, particularly for a British film-maker in the late 1940s. In order to achieve this aim, further fine-tuning and tinkering with the production team continued. Allan Gray was dropped as composer and replaced with Brian Easdale. Hein Heckroth was retained as costume designer and Jack Cardiff as cinematographer. Cardiff's work on Black Narcissus was outstanding and stretched the potential of the Technicolor equipment and system to its limits. Although an exotic visual feast, the vast majority of the work was completed at Pinewood and the few exterior scenes were shot in the oriental gardens of Leonardslee in Sussex. T h e reality of the Himalayas, a hyper-reality in fact, was created in England thanks to the work of an outstanding and inspired team. 16 'Poppa' D a y painted huge glass mattes of the Himalayas and large-scale plaster models of the pleasure palace were constructed allowing Cardiff maximum access for lighting and shooting. Great difficulties were posed by the need to create a landscape horizon through the windows of the palace when in reality they were pieces of set no more than twenty feet from the camera. O n a conventional black-and-

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white production special cameras were used to make photographic backings. Cardiff decided to apply this technique but disagreed with Junge's desire to paint them lightly, opting instead to rub in pastel chalk. This technique worked creating a far more subtle effect and revealed the value of Cardiff's interest in art history and the techniques of the great artists. However, Cardiff's good ideas sometimes meant the erosion of his other flashes of inspiration as he recounted in his autobiography. Initially, the film was due to end with a sequence back in Calcutta in which Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) explains the reasons behind the failure of the convent to her Mother Superior. At first she tries to put a brave face on things and provide rational reasons for the outcome, but then collapses into floods of tears as she pours out the true story: the erotically charged atmosphere, the longing for home, the desire for male company, the effect of the landscape and people. Completely unruffled by this story the Mother Superior has finally found proof that the seemingly machine-like efficiency of Sister Clodagh had disguised a more spiritual nature. The tears streaming down Clodagh's face were then the cue for the camera to pull back to the convent windows lashed by the rains of the Indian monsoon. The shadows of the monsoon rains, which had already presaged the evacuation from the palace, were to merge with the firm black shadows of the nuns and then fade into blackness. Much pleased with his work Cardiff felt he had engineered the perfect ending to the film, but the next day on set he suggested that heavy raindrops on the huge rhubarb leaves would create an excellent effect and could be used to signify the departure of the nuns with the camera tilting up from the dull waxy, wet leaf to the fast disappearing convoy. Powell was convinced and the scene was shot. Liking the effect, even if it did mean that David Farrar (playing Mr Dean) was obviously partly blinded by the studio-created downpour, Powell cut the original end sequence and replaced it with this new one.17 Like A Matter of Life and Death, the technical challenges posed by the production meant it was an expensive one, overrunning by £50,000, costing £351,949 (A Matter of Life and Death was £43,000 under at £300,000). The film rather made up for this problem by proving very successful at the box-office particularly in Catholic

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6. The girl tries to go home to her mother hut the shoes take control.

countries, all of which appeared to appreciate greatly the struggle between physical and spiritual desires. Controversy broke out in the USA where the Legion of Decency tried to organise a boycott, which merely served to stimulate interest in the film. British critics were fascinated by the look and feel of the film, even if they were undecided on its quality and meaning. Once again critical reaction appears to have been unable to cope with the fantastic, exotic and even erotic in British cinema. However, the British viewing public was clearly interested in the film. Recognising the film's brilliance, the Academy awarded it three Oscars: Jack Cardiff for his colour cinematography and Alfred Junge for both art direction and set decoration. After this success the Archers rather blotted their record with a film they produced but did not direct, the strange and ill-disciplined The End of the River. A flop at the time, and little remembered today, it is hard to explain away this film other than to say that the highly imaginative and experimental natures of the Archers and their team needed strict discipline to keep their work coherent. When risks were taken without due consideration, as they were in The End of

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the River, probably because they were intoxicated with success, the results were disappointing. The film is little more than a footnote in their career, and can be left at that. The Archers now turned to their long-planned ballet film. As usual, Powell and Pressburger relied on their tried and tested team to support them in the making of The Red Shoes. However, it was a slightly reconfigured team and continued the sense of departure marked by Black Narcissus. As has been noted, Powell especially saw Black Narcissus as a definite step towards his dream of a 'composed' film that required an innovative and flexible approach from all departments. The first significant alteration to the line-up was the retention of Brian Easdale as composer. Easdale had been preferred to Allan Gray for Black Narcissus because he had lived in India, was a close friend of Rumer Godden and was interested in oriental music. This decision to entrust the score to a genuine expert reveals a definite shift in emphasis towards the composed film. The score was in no way incidental', it was integral. While Easdale was working on the score for Black Narcissus, Powell and Pressburger were already planning ahead for The Red Shoes. At this stage they were quite happy to entrust the work to Gray and asked him to produce a score. It was made clear to Gray that a full ballet was required. A slow worker, and moreover one happy to turn out perfectly solid soundtracks only occasionally punctuated with genuine innovation and higher inspiration, as in his score for A Matter of Life and Death, Gray's first sketches proved intensely disappointing. Perhaps most importantly, Robert Helpmann, who had the task of choreographing the ballet, strongly disapproved. Gray was allowed to proceed for a fortnight longer before Pressburger took the decision to contact Easdale. As Easdale admitted to Monk Gibbon, the greatest relief was in finding the immediate inspiration for the shoemaker's steps, for this was the leitmotif of the entire ballet, and equally significantly it impressed Massine, Helpmann, Powell and Pressburger on first hearing. Accounts differ as to the length of the ballet score. Powell stated in his autobiography that he wanted twenty minutes, but Pressburger initially insisted on fifteen before a compromise of seventeen minutes was agreed. The final running time was, in fact, fourteen and a half minutes. (The version

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conducted by Kenneth Alwyn with the Philharmonic Orchestra for Silva Screen Records in 1993 is just under fifteen minutes.) Easdale's contribution to the film was undoubtedly immense, and it certainly allowed the Archers to achieve their ambition of a composed film. Every piece of music heightens and illuminates, it drives the visuals, the dialogue and the plot. The score for the ballet is a masterpiece. He also managed to complete it quickly, which was an important consideration, as the Archers wanted the music recorded as soon as possible and the ballet sequence filmed last to give maximum time to create and shape its visualisation. Easdale realised that his piece needed to break free from the bonds of usual film composition, including the work of such masters of the art as Vaughan Williams and Walton, while at the same time avoiding the production of something so avant-garde that it would lose the sympathy of a cinema audience. He achieved this aim with immense skill. The viewer/listener is immediately drawn into the piece by the piano tinkling out the notes of the shoemaker's dance, a recurring and haunting theme; the orchestral writing then sweeps between the weird discordance of the nightmare scenes and a lush romantic waltz-theme for the ballroom dream. An innovative departure was secured by the highly effective use of the Ondes Martenot, an instrument invented in 1928. This strange electronic keyboard instrument produced a shimmering and eerie glissando and was used in the dream and nightmare sequences of the ballet, imparting a magical and enchanted atmosphere that matched and enhanced Heckroth's inspired sets. For all his brilliance in The Red Shoes, Easdale was, and remains, a strangely enigmatic character. This attribute is reflected in Gibbon's book about the film. He devoted three chapters to the protagonists of the film constructed around interviews conducted with his subjects. The second of these (ch. 8) is about Easdale and Helpmann, although it quickly becomes obvious that Helpmann is the real substance of the section, and Easdale serves as a mere introduction to the choreographer. His reactions to Gibbon's questions make him appear a somewhat diffident character, as Gibbon found out. When asked whether he minded that his ballet score had been reduced by two minutes to twelve and a half, he replied that Heckroth and

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7. Dancing through the stalls of the fair long after everyone has departed.

Helpmann probably suffered more by it.18 This rather placid outlook was reflected in his suggestion that Sir Thomas Beecham conduct the ballet for the film recording. Powell felt this was the act of a true artist, one with the vision to realise that his work would be best expressed through the hands of a more experienced man. Yet behind the painfully diffident surface of this Manchester-born composer lay a good deal more. He composed his first opera, Rapuniel, in 1927 while a seventeen-year-old student at the Royal College of Music. In 1935 he completed a second opera, The Corn King, which was not staged until 1950, doubtless as a result of his success with The Red Shoes. Some orchestral pieces followed, as well as work with the GPO Film Unit and then wartime work with the CFU before he came to the attention of the Archers. Perhaps his most impressive work was the large-scale choral piece, Missa Coventriensis, composed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962, but almost immediately overshadowed by Britten's War Requiem. When Easdale died in 1995 hardly any of his music, aside from The Red Shoes, was known or recorded, and nine years later the situation is no different. He certainly enhanced most subsequent productions of

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the Archers, showing that he was capable of reacting to a variety of topics from the grand, Waltonian themes of The Battle of the River Plate to the jarring, jangling, almost atonal score that illuminates the mind of a war-hero battling against his nerves and the bottle in The Small Back Room. Easdale's score worked symbiotically with Hein Heckroth's sets, the second major alteration to the Archers team. Powell and Pressburger's relationship with Alfred Junge, the designer who had brought them so much success and acclaim, had become increasingly tense. Junge felt that he deserved an equal billing with Powell and Pressburger. Years later Powell implied that Junge's self-proclaimed genius was beginning to rile them, and hinted that Junge was not above signing off the work of his team as his own. Tempers had frayed somewhat during the making of A Matter of Life and Death, and problems resurfaced while Black Narcissus was in production. Although Junge's sets for Black Narcissus were technically spectacular and created a corner of the Himalayas at Pinewood, the Archers felt that they were essentially exercises in painstaking re-creation and imitation of reality, whereas they wanted something more fantastic and imaginative. Gibbon defined the Archers' thoughts neatly and colourfully: [Realism in set design] only threatened to kill completely all imaginative activity on the part of the audience. This is, of course, the impasse towards which extreme naturalism logically leads us. It is designed to delight by familiarity and verisimilitude an audience of morons and to leave the imagination about as much play as a board of wood clamped firmly in an iron vice.19 According to Powell, he had not realised that the very man required for their new production was already working in their team and it took a friend to point this out. Hein Heckroth was a painter by profession and a German by birth, like Junge, and had spent some time in Australia during the war as an interned alien before his release back to Britain. Junge had recruited him into the Archers team, where he was given the job of designing the costumes and titles for both A Matter of Life and Death and Black Narcissus. As with the composition of the score, the Archers kept their

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8. Vicky falls under the spell ofLermontov (Anton IValbrook).

original man working while secretly lining up a substitute. Thus Junge laboured on designs while Heckroth was given the task of assembling the ballet section. When Junge found out about these arrangements he resigned, perhaps expecting this gesture to be refused. However, the Archers let him go with, at least in Powell's version, remarkably little hostility between them, whereas Junge hardly spoke to Heckroth again. Heckroth was now given the entire film and was allied to a highly competent technician, Arthur Lawson, in order to compensate for his lack of experience. Heckroth's greatest quality was that he had the ability and the insight to transform Powell and Pressburger's mental visions into real pictures. He was the perfect man for this task, his training and experiences having given him the skill to interpret their ideas. After working with the expressionist Otto Dix and the surrealist Max Ernst, he had joined Kurt Jooss's ballet company to design the sets for The Green Table in 1932.20 He was also in sympathy with the contemporary British ballet world's desire to create an imaginative backdrop rather than a designed one reflecting realities. Painters such as Graham Sutherland and John Piper were used to create sets rather than set designers per se.

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Work commenced immediately on elaborate storyboards. According to Gibbon, Heckroth produced 300 sketches of the ballet alone, which were handed over to Ivor Beddoes to transform into colour strips outlining every sequence and scene, with Easdale integral to the process in order to keep vision and music in perfect harmony. (This 'cartoon' accompanied by the score is included in the Special Edition D V D version of the film.) As filming on the ballet commenced, each day's rushes were spliced into the cartoon, gradually realising all its scenes. Christopher Challis, the camera operator, told Kevin Macdonald that the crew looked forward to this daily updating and were fascinated by the technical skill involved. 21 In total, Heckroth produced some 2,000 sketches for the film and applied himself to the issue of colour. He was absolutely determined that the camera should interpret his colour schemes perfectly, which meant that he needed to understand the techniques of film-making. T h e first rushes were unsatisfactory. Heckroth realised that the strong lights required for filming accentuated his colours so much that they obliterated the dancers. He therefore toned them down by 50 per cent in order to get the right effect. Teamwork started to pay off, for Heckroth's theatrical training made him unsure of Powell's approach. Stuck in two-dimensional form, he did not at first appreciate Powell's exuberant use of the camera: For the first two days I sit on the set watching Mickie and the camera man. If I had a pistol I would have shot them both. They play havoc with everything. It seems to me that they are doing everything wrong. But when I see the rushes next day everything is right. I realise then that if I had been the director it would have been the end of the picture. With all my mobile theories I see that I could not have got away from the static two-dimensional conceptions. From now on I feel absolutely safe while Mickie swings the camera, when he flies up on the roof, or when he and the camera man growl in the obscure corners of the set, because I know from now on that these two bring really the life and movement which the thing needs.22 Although the ballet sequences are rightly praised as the apogee of Heckroth's contribution to the film, his impressive stamp is seen

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throughout and is intrinsic to the film's overall composition. His imagined reality provides a fascinating challenge to the viewer. When members of the Ballet Lermontov are bundled on to a train at the Gare du Sud for the Mediterranean coast, railway porters move great chests with consummate ease and slap labels on them marked 'Monte Carlo'. By the way they are moved, it is so very obvious that the chests and cases are empty, but it does not matter in the least for the point is the rhythmic energy and dynamism of the scene; it is the ballet of the porters while the company scramble aboard and wave from the windows. A seemingly ordinary scene such as the evening meeting between Julian and Vicky on the balcony of a public promenade overlooking Monte Carlo station provides another neat example. The whole set pays only the slightest attention to the reality of such a location: evening is signalled by a saffron yellow backdrop; a train trundles by with a perfect cone of puffy white steam; the rich Mediterranean vegetation is symbolised by a green rubbery-looking plant with lily-white leaves. Everything seems transposed straight from the illustrations of a children's fairytale book. A riot of colours also floods the eye in Grischa's birthday scene. Michael Bayston, one of the dancers, recalled that the women were asked to go home and find their brightest party frocks and summer clothes and the men their loudest shirts.23 A cafe scene, supposedly on the Monte Carlo waterfront, was then mocked up at Pinewood and included an enormous, again obviously fake, champagne bottle (an unwitting precursor of the Highland Clan whisky bottle in The Small Back Room}). At the other extreme from the relative simplicity of this jolly party scene are the elaborate sets for the opera house in Paris. A gaudiness, an eighteenth-century rococo on stimulants is the effect as it teeters on the edge of tongue-in-cheek, knowing comedy. Heckroth's sets worked on screen because of Jack Cardiff's superb command of the camera. By 1947 Cardiff had become a crucial member of the Archers' team of actors and technicians. His first job with Powell and Pressburger was a short, but memorable, sequence for The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, involving the sudden appearance of trophy animal heads on the wall of Clive Candy's study accompanied by the crack of rifle reports implying his gentleman-soldier's

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9. The girl is offered the false hope of salvation by the shoemaker.

lifestyle and love of big-game hunting.24 However, this did not mark Cardiff's debut among the big players. Born into a music-hall family Cardiff grew up in a baroque world of entertainers and theatrical technicians. During his childhood he appeared in various juvenile roles but with no real sense of following his parents on to the stage. Instead, he branched out into cinema as soon as he left school taking a job at Elstree, home of several film-making enterprises. He then commenced a long and valuable education in his trade of camera operator. This included working with Alfred Hitchcock and the doyen of British cameramen, Freddie Young. In the mid-1930s he was nominated for training on the new Technicolor system. Cardiff's responses to the Technicolor team reveal much about his concept of cinematography and colour. Instead of regaling the panel with a perfect technical rendition of his trade, he commenced a neat lecture on art history. A keen student of painting and amateur artist himself, he expanded on his love of painting, explaining the use of light in both Old Masters and more modern painters. Cardiff's knowledge of light and colour in the work of artists as diverse as Rembrandt, Cimabue, Giotto, Vermeer, Matisse,

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Derain, Picasso and Turner has filled his work with a vibrancy and brilliance matched by few other cinematographers. Martin Scorsese has written of Cardiff's work: 'it's as though he is paying tribute to his beloved painting through film. It is only fitting at this point to say that his achievement as a cinematographer was to make cinema into an art of moving painting. In this sense Cardiff was a true pioneer of colour.'25 The Red Shoes is his tribute to colour, light and art par excellence. Cardiff's enthusiasm and originality certainly convinced Technicolor, and he was accepted for training in the new process. The bulky equipment and elaborate technical knowledge required for Technicolor work were certainly not easy to master, and Cardiff's conversion reveals both his confidence and mastery of his trade. Working with the veteran Canadian, Osmond Borradaile, and the great Georges Perinal, he assisted in the creation of probably the greatest British Technicolor achievement of the 1930s, Alexander Korda's The Four Feathers. Korda's famous lavish approach to filmmaking ensured a full-blooded epic including a great deal of location footage shot in the Sudan with the assistance of the British army. Perinal, Cardiff and Borradaile created a gorgeous world of imperial romance. The burning heat of the desert was wonderfully captured and it contrasts so powerfully with the lush greenery of England. As the young Harry Faversham climbs to his lonely bedroom guided only by a guttering candle, the cinematography draws out the darkness of the wooden beams that make a prison of his father's house, and the yellowing canvases of his ancestors stare down at him almost in accusation. Set design and cinematography came together most effectively in a glorious ballroom sequence. Red-coated soldiers twirl gowned women round in a riot of colour. According to his military advisers the correct tunic colour for officers of the period was blue, but as Korda tersely replied, 'This is Technicolor.' Historical accuracy was allowed to go only so far. The spectacle mattered more at certain points, and Cardiff proved that he was capable of delivering it. At the outbreak of war, Cardiff's technical expertise was put to a variety of uses including the making of a special film about new plastic surgery techniques, which proved to be a harrowing experience as he witnessed hideous injuries and disfigurements.26 However,

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his two finest achievements were The Great Mr Handel (1942) and the celebrated drama-documentary Western Approaches (1944). The Great Mr Handel was a flop at the box-office, being a rather staid and plodding production. Its undoubted highlights are its set designs and cinematography. Cardiff's work brought out a Hogarthian London of weird and wonderful delights. 27 Western Approaches on the other hand was a minor epic in production terms alone. Based on the work of merchant seamen and a tribute to their endurance and skills, the film follows the story of a convoy from N e w York to Britain. A German submarine sinks a ship and its crew take to the lifeboats while an armed merchant ship hunts down the German submarine. Filmed entirely on location, Cardiff experienced a range of environmental extremes including six months shooting the lifeboat sequences off Holyhead in north Wales. It was Cardiff's immersion, at times quite literally, in the world of the documentarists where the real world was paramount. However, far from dropping his art and producing something very different, Cardiff applied it to the documentary. Gritty reality was created, but only by the most artistic and artificial means — a distinction often missed by the documentary disciples and British film critics. T h e 'reality' of a submarine sinking was captured only because Cardiff had the technical and artistic ability to realise it. He and his team rigged up an elaborate winch for the camera that allowed it to be immersed and he then filmed through the water which was fast flooding the hold. In order to create the 'reality' of continuity of weather, Cardiff had to use all his knowledge and skill to engineer blue skies on foul December days. He brought an equal artistry to the documentary reality of Scott of the Antarctic (1947), Ealing's celebrated epic. Painstaking research into Scott's last voyage underpinned the dialogue and plot, as Charles Frend created a work that occasionally lacks drama but never impact or effect. T h e sensitive portraits of the protagonists combined with Vaughan Williams's score were given extra power by Cardiff's brilliant photography. He created stunning polar shots, particularly of the polar night and the amazing clarity of the constellations, with the help of matte scenery painters, and filmed the final shots in Scott's tent through a green filter mirroring the way light would have fallen through the canvas while also giving it a strangely

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sepulchral feel, like the effect of green marble in funeral architecture: the tent becomes the living tomb. Critics should have remembered this artistic, engineered and created approach to cinematic reality, particularly when expressing their bafflement at his collaborations with the Archers. For The Red Shoes Cardiff employed all his refined technical genius and artistic sense. His thorough research for the film also gave him an education in a whole new art form. Powell was absolutely convinced that Cardiff needed some grasp of ballet before shooting commenced and so booked blocks of tickets. Highly dubious about this form of preparation, Cardiff went along with some trepidation but was soon enchanted. He devoured books on ballet and biographies of the great dancers. At the same time he visited Madame Volkova's classes and was fascinated to see the glamorous dancers practise at the barre simply dressed in comfortable old clothes. His willingness to experiment was also given full rein, as he made various refinements designed to capture the movement of the dancers. He devised a gadget that allowed him to alter camera speed from normal to double which was then used to 'freeze' dancers in midair and is seen to particularly brilliant effect in the Red Shoes ballet when Shearer leaps up and then descends slowly into the nightmare/ dream world. Dancers were shot jumping from platforms and then at different speeds to give the impression that they were falling a far greater distance. Pirouettes were also shot at differing speeds to change them from slow, majestic initial movements to increasingly frenzied, passionate expressions, as is illustrated by Shearer's scene in Swan Lake. Even more effectively, this technique was employed in the dance with the paper man which allowed Helpmann to morph from the newspaper and then back again magically. Requiring spotlights for the ballet sequence, Cardiff had to assemble equipment that could compete with the powerful lamps required for Technicolor work. As a result another special piece of kit was constructed, a water-cooled 300-amp arc-light. Then, just before the production commenced, he acquired the latest Technicolor lamps, a 225-amp light some 125 amps stronger than the previous versions. His ability to integrate this new equipment into the production at such short notice once again revealed Cardiff's

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technical brilliance. Chris Challis, Cardiff's equally excellent operator and assistant, worked with him to create these effects and recalled Cardiff's obsession with obtaining the correct filters for his planned colouring effects. The filters were hand-made by two old ladies who lived at Chalfont St Giles. They painted them on to gelatine and then placed them between two pieces of optical glass. (When they died they took the secret of their technique with them.)28 Heckroth and Cardiff were indeed two perfectly matched artists. Casting The Red Shoes was a tricky task. Both Powell and Pressburger were convinced that the lead star had to be a dancer who could act. They were determined to avoid the expedient of a dancing double. The Archers were already aware of Moira Shearer, who had been pointed out to them by Robert Helpmann when he cast her in his ballet Miracle in the Gorbals. At that point Shearer was just beginning to make her name with Ninette de Valois's Sadler's Wells ballet company, and when first contacted both she and de Valois were not that impressed by the offer. Shearer believed any distraction from dancing at that critical point in her career might prove fatal and thus declined to become involved in the project. At this stage she was also extremely unimpressed with the script as she found its lack of reality jarring: '[it was] ... utterly unlike any ballet company that there had ever been anywhere. They just weren't like that.'29 She had clearly misunderstood the point of their story and intentions behind the film. Shearer was not alone; many critics fell into the same trap when the film was released. Rebutted, the Archers were forced to look elsewhere. A number of other ballerinas were tested, including the Americans Nana Gollner and Edwina Seaver. None proved satisfactory and, ironically enough, on the one occasion when Powell and Pressburger accompanied Helpmann to the ballet in order to see Gollner dance, she was taken ill and Shearer replaced her at short notice. Powell began to lose patience which led him to consider a rising young actress, Hazel Court, and Ann Todd, who was then at the height of her stardom. Pressburger and Helpmann held firm against these moves and insisted that a dancer was the vital prerequisite. Just as it was beginning to look hopeless, Shearer unexpectedly changed her mind and gained de Valois's

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10. The final spasms of life and possession as the girl falls into the arms of her former fiance.

permission to appear in the film. She later recalled that it was in fact de Valois who suggested it, believing it would resolve the matter once and for all and allow her to return to a ballet career fully focused. Powell's entertaining version of this saga paints de Valois as a rather conniving and manipulative woman with an obsessive interest in Margot Fonteyn's career. His portrait of Shearer is equally mischievous and amusing. Although clearly fascinated by her — yet another red-headed leading lady from the man who labelled blondes insipid — he took the chance to get in one or two light-hearted cracks at her expense, referring to her good Scottish business sense which was articulated in the demands made via her agent. For a newcomer, Shearer turned in a perfect performance, revealing a subtlety and feel for the lines as if she had been a trained actor of many years' experience. She convincingly portrays a young, eager ballerina determined to impress but not at all sure how to behave in the company of stars. Her training and experience also provided her with the ability to handle the scenes of great energy and emotion. Doubtless drawing on remembered moments in her own career,

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her portrayal of a scared debutante anxiously counting down the minutes to curtain-up is wonderful. In a fit of nervous compulsion she continually stretches, going on and off pointe and wringing her hands in despair. Her final scenes are also extremely powerful. However, she later confessed that this was probably partly inspired by one of Powell's notorious fits of anger. He launched a tirade against Yvonne Andre, the actress playing her dresser, which was so shocking that when required to cry Shearer found it an easy task. Of course, Shearer was at her best in the dance sequences, bringing to them an incredible technical virtuosity and emotional intensity. Throughout the production, however, she failed to appreciate the insistence that her dancing be subordinated to the disciplines of filmmaking. She was dismayed by the continual cuts and repetition and believed that the crew were interested in choosing shots effective only from a technical cinematic point of view and not a dance one. It was only once she saw a rough cut that she realised the overall effect, although she did weep with sadness and frustration during the first showing. Clearly, Shearer's conversion to cinema was a difficult and troubled one! Shearer's debut was assisted by the thoroughly professional and accommodating attitudes displayed by two other Archers favourites, Marius Goring as Julian Craster and Anton Walbrook as Boris Lermontov. As Powell admitted, Goring was actually a little too old to play the bright young thing, Julian Craster, but his tact and unselfish approach to his craft were much prized by the Archers. Anton Walbrook, like Goring, was a well-mannered and sensitive actor who was prepared to support Shearer through some of their very tough scenes, and his casting in the role of Lermontov was absolutely inspired. His performances for the Archers were all of high quality, but The Red Shoes was by far and away his finest. Walbrook revelled in the role and was particularly brilliant in the 'gear-changes' which marked Lermontov's alternation between chic, urbane aesthete to hard-nosed, ruthless impresario through to demented, imploding control freak in the final scene. Another Archers regular was Esmond Knight. Knight's portrayal of Sir Livingstone Montague, 'Livy', captured exactly what Powell and Pressburger wanted, a combination of Constant Lambert, the unorthodox composer and conductor, and

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Sir Thomas Beecham. Livy is arrogant but charming, and willing to give praise where it is due; equally importantly he is very English and thus very different to the exotically continental Lermontov. As in all his other roles, Knight brought out the qualities of his character neatly, economically and effectively. Requiring dancers who could act, the Archers were lucky that they could call on one who had already worked with them, Robert Helpmann, who had a wonderful cameo as the supercilious spy, de Jong, in One of Our Aircraft is Missing, Although an excellent dancer, Helpmann was also very interested in pursuing an acting career. He had overacted quite outrageously in One of Our Aircraft is Missing bringing a rather camp attitude into the film which was completely at odds with the intensity of the story and the dour, sober performances of those portraying the RAF crew. In fact, Helpmann's exaggerated style bore similarities with early silent performances, and certainly left the audience in no doubt that he was the villain (only a moustache-twirling scene, a fedora, opera-cape, and a virgin tied to a railway track could have signalled it more plainly).30 The Archers retained contact with Helpmann and used his advice in the early planning stages of the film before casting him in the role of Ivan Boleslawsky, one of the leading lights of the Ballet Lermontov. The role of Boleslawsky demanded an icy reserve that could be punctured only on certain occasions. Helpmann captured this dedicated, artistic, spoilt nature extremely effectively. (Helpmann's biographer is on the whole rather snotty about The Red Shoes and his contribution to it, remarking: As far as acting went The Red Shoes was no improvement. His part was that of a Russian principal dancer whom he endowed with an unconvincing accent, and his action of it only came alive in a few brief moments in rehearsals or first-night scenes.')31 Perhaps more importantly for the production, Helpmann worked hard on the choreography for the Red Shoes ballet, and all the other dance sequences in the film, requiring constant and close liaison with Easdale, Cardiff and Heckroth. Helpmann's professional credentials and sensibilities had to be managed neatly, for the great dancer Leonide Massine was also brought into the team. Massine had worked for the Diaghilev ballet company and had known and worked with Nijinsky, Lifar, Ravel,

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Stravinsky, Fokine, Matisse, Derain, Picasso and Dali. The Archers managed to recruit him thanks to a stroke of luck; he happened to be in Britain just as casting commenced. Powell and Pressburger visited him at his London apartment and explained their ideas. When they mentioned that Helpmann had been asked to choreograph the ballet, Massine stated carefully that he would work with Helpmann but would create his own dance for the shoemaker. Feeling that it was a small price to pay, the Archers agreed. More important was Massine's fee. It became clear that he was relatively hard up and the £10,000 promised lightened the atmosphere considerably. Fortunately, not only was Massine a great dancer still capable of choreographing his own roles, he also proved a more than adequate actor. Grischa Ljubov's character is that of the highly-strung, brilliant choreographer of the Ballet Lermontov, and Massine doubtless drew upon his own personality and those of the many legendary people he had worked with over the years. Both Cardiff and Powell recalled that he was a man capable of great humour and high-jinks one moment and the next instantly transforming himself into a dignified artist guided by stern concentration. According to Cardiff, Massine remained a bit of a loner on set and never quite merged into the team, although his performances and contribution were excellent. And, thanks to the careful, courteous approach of both men and the rest of the production team, Massine and Helpmann worked together effectively, if not always completely happily. A convincing actress and dancer was also required for the role of Irena Boronskaja, the prima ballerina of Ballet Lermontov at the start of the film. Powell's typically forthright description of Boronskaja's character stated that she was 'an impressive young dancer, a beauty, a good-humoured, lazy slut, destined to become the wife of a rich, easy-going racehorse owner, by whom she would have three children. No more and no less.'32 He found Ludmilla Tcherina for the part. Captivated by her slightly unconventional beauty — raven hair, large, saucy eyes, milk-white skin and a slight overbite — Powell demanded her presence in London for a test. Tcherina, half-French, half-White Russian, was a professional dancer, but she and her husband were very short of cash and were thrilled by the offer of film work. If Powell's memoirs are to be believed, Tcherina did little more than

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play herself. She certainly produced a wonderful performance as the capricious, enchanting, maddening Boronskaja. Far from just providing the deus ex machina for Vicky's sudden promotion, the role of Boronskaja is crucial to the film's themes of art and ambition, aesthetic sense and human lusts. Vicky's power and potential are heightened by the contrast with Boronskaja's happy-go-lucky, talented but in no way spiritually or intellectually engaged, character. When Boronskaja returns to the Ballet Lermontov, it is because she is bored. Having got married and tried out the supposed dream-life of a woman of leisure, she misses the hustle and bustle of life in a ballet company and the adoration of her fellow professionals and the audience. When Vicky returns, it is for an altogether different and more complex set of reasons. Tcherina captured this fecklessness with ease, her porcelain complexion and china doll attitudes seeing her through with great aplomb. An entire corps de ballet was then assembled for the production. It was apparently considered that the rather flat chests of the perfectly toned ballerinas would not appeal to the American audience, and the wardrobe department was instructed to pad out the girls with cotton wool. However, this caused a fair degree of resentment, and during the course of the day's shooting each girl gradually shed the padding and returned to her natural figure. Helpmann assisted in maintaining the spirits and discipline of the dancers, many of whom were completely baffled and disoriented by the staccato nature of film production. The dancing environment was also highly detrimental to the physique of the dancers. Hard floors took a heavy toll on feet and the heat of the studios often proved oppressive. One day, the dancers were given five minutes' rest and were allowed the luxury of removing their shoes. It proved to be an expensive mistake as their feet immediately swelled and they were unable to replace their shoes, causing the loss of valuable shooting time. The final important role was that of the Ballet Lermontov's brilliant, dedicated, long-serving designer, Sergei Ratov. The Archers approached Albert Bassermann, a German actor with a long and distinguished career behind him. Bassermann had left Germany for the USA in the 1930s disgusted by the policies of the Nazis (Anton Walbrook regarded his fellow German-speaker as a hero

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for his stance), where he worked hard on his English in order to continue his career. He then went on to appear in such famous films as Dr Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940), Foreign Correspondent (1941) and Since You Went Away (1944). Unfortunately, the eighty-yearold Bassermann provoked the appalling ire and sarcasm of Powell, and was subjected to a tirade. Walbrook was disgusted and vowed never to work for Powell again. 33 Although clearly past his best, Bassermann's performance is solid enough, imparting Ratov's enthusiastic, perfectionist nature, and his warmly paternal interest in the ballet company which provides a neat contrast to the controlling, manipulative interventions of Lermontov. T h e cast and crew of The Red Shoes were therefore incredibly distinguished, featuring the pick of musical talent, the young Easdale, and an established knight of the realm, Beecham; a mirror image of experience and youth was found in the dancers from Shearer and Tcherina to Helpmann and Massine, while the technical team was second to none and extremely experienced. Armed with this clutch of prestigious names the Archers were able to fight off inquiries from Arthur Rank and his colleagues. T h e names provided a respectability and quality, appearing to guarantee high production values and artistic success. As noted earlier, however, this sheen was only partially effective. W h e n pitted against the formidable accountant John Davis, artistic integrity had little chance of a sympathetic hearing. T h e Archers had to prove that they could deliver the goods for Rank, but the rumours about The Red Shoes, its costs and form were not particularly encouraging.

It is often remarked by historians and commentators on national identity that the British character is based on pragmatism and is highly suspicious of abstraction and dogma. Men as diverse in their political leanings as Stanley Baldwin and George Orwell agreed that the essence of Britain lay in its instinctive wisdom and calm. Philosophies of life and intellectualism have failed to stimulate the British on the whole. This aspect of national character is alive and well to this day: Tony Blair's government has a veritable obsession with education and proclaims its commitment to spread the benefits of a university education to 50 per cent of the population; however, this vision of learning has very little to do with intellectual pursuits for their own sake or their intrinsic value. Learning is about education and education is about skills immediately useful to the economy. Britain is as utilitarian, as Victorian, today as it was in 1945 or 1845. In 1945, the British opted for a form of socialism almost utterly devoid of philosophical roots. The British people emerged from the war determined to improve things — a vision any self-respecting Victorian would have recognised. It was a pragmatic, practical expression of the lofty ideals of democracy and liberty so often referred to in wartime cinema and propaganda. 'Liberty, Equality and Fraternity' in Britain meant the labourer's right to sit in the same doctor's waiting room, or enter his child for the same Eleven Plus examination, as his middle-class neighbour. As already noted, during the war Powell and Pressburger had done their bit to promote British values and had poignantly explored the determination of the occupied peoples to live according to their own laws and governments in such films as 49th Parallel and One of Our Aircraft is Missing. But they had also done something thoroughly

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unBritish, an unBritishness that was to infuse The Red Shoes. In A Canterbury Tale and A Matter of Life and Death (and to a certain extent in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp) they emerged into the world of fantasies, obsessions and abstractions. T h e pragmatism, the 'horse-sense' of the British was forgotten at times in these films. Squire Colpepper is driven by a maniacal passion for the countryside and the cultural heritage of the English people. T h e laws of the universe, dependable, unchanging, observable, empirical, like the British themselves, are smashed by the unfathomable quality of love in A Matter of Life and Death. Instead of rejoicing in the observational brilliance of the very English Dickens, Pilot Officer Peter Carter is besotted by the limitless depths of metaphysical poetry. However, it is Black Narcissus that provides the most obvious pointer to the themes of The Red Shoes. Released in 1947, this sumptuous Technicolor extravaganza throbs and quivers with a quite unBritish passion. Based on a Rumer G o d den novel, the film follows the work of a convent recently granted the use of a former harem-palace high in the Himalayas. Instead of knuckling down to a life of service and sober reflection, the women become increasingly agitated and restless due to the presence of a gaudily-dressed Indian prince, the rugged British factor, Mr Dean, the insouciant exoticism of a servant girl dumped on them in order to reform her manners, and the limitless horizon. Gradually, self-discipline begins to break down and Sister Ruth, excellently portrayed by Kathleen Byron, cracks. Obsessed with Dean, she quits her nun's habit and returns to civilian dress. In a deeply erotic scene, Ruth is seen twisting the tube of lipstick from its case and slowly colouring her lips a deep, burgundy red. Dean rejects Ruth and states that the whole convent is teetering on insanity. Thwarted, Ruth becomes convinced that the Mother Superior, Sister Clodagh, has already claimed Dean's affections and sets off to murder her. A confrontation takes place on a cliff edge during which Ruth falls to her death. Ironically, the scene takes place round the chapel bell and Ruth's despairing last reach sets the bell in motion: the instrument which calls the faithful to contemplate the glory of God crashes out the demise of a woman driven mad by the division between devotion to higher, spiritual callings and her overpowering human, physical

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11. On through the lands of nightmare and fantasy.

desires. By way of epilogue the convent closes and Clodagh departs along with her nuns, leaving behind a landscape, a culture and an atmosphere none of them was prepared for. Black Narcissus created quite a stir on first release, particularly in the USA as Sarah Street has shown.1 Audiences were both intrigued and shocked by its vivid passions and removal from a world they could understand and relate to easily. The Red Shoes took this process one stage further. The Red Shoes is certainly not 'healthy' in the British sense of the word. Stephen Fry has explored British understandings of this term. He points out that earlier definitions of health and heartiness had given way to a puritanical understanding by the nineteenth century. Health was now 'a quality of the immortal soul' connected with 'purity'. There is purity at the heart of The Red Shoes — the pursuit of art and beauty — but this is not British purity, this is an alien quality and therefore unhealthy. Professional critics and audiences alike often reacted to Powell and Pressburger's later collaborations according to this divide: some were thrilled by the emotions and values of their films while others shied away slightly nauseated by their unhealthy and unBritish exuberance.

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THE RED SHOES

T h e film can be set alongside a list of British cultural outsiders, and has firm connections with the Decadent movement of the 1890s and the world of Wilde, Beardsley, Frederick Rolfe and the Yellow Book. Like them, The Red Shoes celebrates art for art's sake. Powell wrote in his autobiography, ' T h e message of the film was Art. Nothing mattered but Art.' 2 Although the film does have a plot, the images and ideas are sometimes so bewildering and the eye and ear so overcome that attempts to follow it in a linear manner become pointless. T h e viewer is often challenged simply to watch and wonder at the beauty of it. Great moral ideas in the accepted Judaeo-Christian sense are not at the heart of The Red Shoes', beauty, surfaces, passions, obsessions are. Wildean agendas on art, beauty and the nature of genius are the real 'philosophical' themes of the film, and British camp provides its essential cultural root. As Stephen Fry has also pointed out, defining camp is a very tricky task. Many have misunderstood it and mislabelled its attributes. Fry provides a neat definition and one that I think applies to The Red Shoes. According to Fry: Camp Camp Camp Camp Camp Camp Camp Camp Camp

loves colour. loves light. takes pleasure in the surface of things. loves paint as much as it loves paintings. prefers style to the stylish. is pale. is unhealthy. is not English, damn it ... is not nearly so superficial as it would have you believe 3

This could be a summary of The Red Shoes.

THE M E C H A N I C S OF THE PLOT

T h e first challenge the film puts to the viewer is that of its narrative structure and style. T h e way in which the viewer is drawn into the film is via the medium of familiarity. At first glance the story seems to be following the standard conventions of the Hollywood backstage musical. O n e could almost mistake it for a revised version of 42nd

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Street. A great deal of effort is put into showing the preparations a company of performers must make when staging a production. In the early stages of the film we see all the madness of rehearsals at Covent Garden. The viewer is shown scenery, stagehands moving the properties and dancers carrying out their warm-up exercises. A little comedy is thrown in when Vicky asks a man standing on his head to give her directions as to where she can find Lermontov. She then asks a group of old ladies who are sitting on bits of scenery and knitting where she might find him. One says that she is just somebody's mother, is of no importance, and does not know where anybody can be found. This is not too dissimilar to the way in which musicals are portrayed in 42nd Street. Unlike 42nd Street and the classic backstage musicals, however, the ultimate point of The Red Shoes is not the eponymous production itself. On first exposure a viewer could be forgiven for thinking that s/he is approaching the climax of the film when the last-minute bustle before curtain-up on the first night of the Red Shoes commences. As he wanders among the stagehands busy assembling at their posts and the corps de ballet carrying out final warm-ups, Lermontov could be mistaken for a Broadway producer about to tell Vicky that she is going out there a chorus girl and must come back a star. However, the film ploughs on past what would seem like the natural ending point; what could possibly follow a sequence lasting eighteen minutes from the moment Lermontov marches backstage and then unfolds into a full-scale ballet for fourteen and a half minutes without a single word of dialogue? The Red Shoes defies this 'natural', neat ending and goes on to tell us something more about art via the seemingly artless and 'unnatural' device of a 'third act' lasting another hour. The film survives this discordance thanks to the overall structure, in which the ballet is the centrepiece. The Red Shoes consists of three great acts, panels in a triptych, pre-ballet, ballet, post-ballet. The ballet is at the crux; it is therefore the end of one thing and the start of another. At one and the same moment the ballet is consummation but not culmination. This gives the narrative a vital, neurotic edge but also keeps up the hopes of the hopeless romantics — will Vicky become a great lover, a great star or both? — and expresses the Archers' desire to make an integrated whole,

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a composed film made up of sinews which run through it from start to finish. O n e of the ways in which Powell and Pressburger keep the dynamic of the film moving forward within this somewhat elliptical structure is to pepper it with foretellings and forewarnings. T h e effect of this technique is to maintain a fairytale aspect deep within the fibre of the film; it is one huge Hans Christian Andersen extravaganza. It infuses the film with a sense of mystery, fate and magic. T h e film opens with the performance of a ballet, The Heart of Fire, at Covent Garden attended by both Vicky and Julian. This gives way to a party thrown by Lady Neston partly in order to promote the career of her niece, Vicky. At the party Lermontov is asked to watch Vicky dance, he refuses saying that he did not realise that he had been asked to an audition. Later when he finds himself chatting to Vicky he asks her why she wants to dance. She answers with a question of her own, ' W h y do you want to live?' His answer, 'I don't know exactly why, but I must', is then met by Vicky stating, ' T h a t ' s my answer too'. This devotion to dance, its symbiotic relationship with life, is one that reverberates throughout the film and is referred to directly after Vicky's success in the premiere of The Red Shoes. Lermontov asks her if she remembers what she said that night at Lady Neston's and wants to know if she still believes in that statement. Her confirmation of this belief will lead to her premature death. T h e shadows of Julian's later achievements are also hinted at in the early sequences of the film. Julian is a student of music and so attends the ballet with his friends in order to hear their tutor's composition, The Heart of Fire. However, Julian realises that it is in fact his own composition and storms off. In a fit of pique he points this out in a letter to Lermontov, though he regrets it and tries to get it back before Lermontov can read it. He is too late to achieve this and Lermontov advises him to let the matter drop stating: 'It is much more disheartening to have to steal than to be stolen from.' Later when Julian doubts whether his score of The Red Shoes is good enough, Livy, musical director of the Ballet Lermontov, reassures him, 'It's a fine score, a magnificent score, I only wished I'd . . . T h e circle has come round; the idea of plagiarism is re-established

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12. The girl and her fiance in the fantasy ballroon scene.

only this time by a man Julian can count on truly as a colleague and friend. The prima ballerina Irena Boronskaja plays out the grandest parallel, even if it does not quite mirror Vicky's tragic ending. At the start of the film Boronskaja's star is clearly in the ascendant. Her fans have come to see her in The Heart of Fire and use her as a yardstick of excellence. Further proof of her star powers is witnessed when Julian turns up at Covent Garden in order to take up the position Lermontov has offered him. The stage-door keeper does not want to let him in, having heard nothing about it. Boronskaja arrives for work; she looks every inch the ballet star, gorgeously turned out with a seductive French accent to boot. It is her influence that ensures Julian's passage past the door; her easy charm wins over the door keeper and her star status is confirmed. Her arguments with her male co-stars also emphasise the sense of a dancer riding the crest of her powers. When she decides to give up dancing in order to get married, she therefore inverts what Lermontov believes every true artist should know and feel: that nothing is bigger or more important than art and the art of dance in particular. Irena disappears out of the story, seemingly for good. But, once again, the

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usual narrative trend is broken for she reappears. Bored by life as a married woman she comes back to the Ballet Lermontov, she must dance again. Vicky's life is to pan out in much the same way, only she has something more than the temperamental, precious, fragile Irena and so her eventual fate will be far more shocking. Vicky's fate is, in fact, played out in one short scene about halfway through the 'first act' of the film. Lermontov agrees to let her dance for Madame Rambert at the Mercury Theatre in Hampstead. The scene at first seems slightly comic and ridiculous for the little theatre is made dreary by shots of the bucketing rain. Further, Swan Lake is being danced without an orchestra, gramophone records provide the accompaniment, one of which is scratched by a member of the backstage crew. A fat man is also seen pushing his way to his seat, decked in his obviously sopping raincoat. In the middle of all this Vicky dances with great intensity and passion, an intensity and passion Lermontov finds fascinating. Something has made him come along to this performance and now he knows why: Vicky is something special and he will accord her special treatment. She and he are already inextricably linked. On reaching Monte Carlo Vicky is given the part of the lead in The Red Shoes; she is to be Boronskaja's replacement. Julian is given the job of writing a new score. Having both gained new assignments, they meet on one of the terraces overlooking the railway line. The scene is prophetic for this is the first time the two are really brought together and at the end of the film it will be the place where they are finally divided, for Vicky will leap to her death from the balustrade. Standing in the evening light they discuss the nature of fame, and Julian wonders what it would be like to wake up and be famous. This is exactly what will happen to both of them: they will be thrust into fame, according to the old cliche, almost overnight. Further, a newspaper wafts past; it carries interviews with Lermontov and the news that Vicky and Julian are to have leading roles in his new production. Later, in the ballet itself, a drifting newspaper will have a different but equally striking effect. As in I Know Where I'm Goings Powell and Pressburger point out that destiny does not follow the neat path laid out for it in human dreams and ambitions. This conviction is played out in a scene in which Julian falls in

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love with Vicky. As they take a drive along the corniche roads, he announces: 'I have decided I do believe in destiny after all.' But the destiny he dreams of is a million miles from that which plays itself out. Destiny is hinted at throughout The Red Shoes, the viewer is actually asked to follow a set of semiological signposts. In the final scene, the one in which the battle wages over Vicky and her soul, her dressing room fills with the sound of Julian's new opera, being premiered at (where else?) Covent Garden. The opera is called Cupid and Psyche and so refers us to Greek mythology. Cupid took the nymph Psyche as his wife, but this provoked Venus who put Psyche to death. Like the story we are witnessing it is one of high passion, jealousy and of conflicting ideas of bliss. The death of Vicky finds its precursor in the ballet itself. At the end of the ballet the young girl dies, having been possessed by the shoes. Vicky leaps to her death on the railway line after experiencing a similar phenomenon. Lying on the railway tracks her costume looks exactly as it had done at the end of the ballet, blackened by soot, only this time it is also smeared with her crimson blood. The colour red is vital to the film for not only is it the colour of the eponymous shoes, it also symbolises life, passion and energy. Red is also dangerous and consuming, the colour of fire and warning. Red is the colour of Vicky's hair. By contrast, Vicky's flesh, like Boronskaja's, is very pale white. In fact, Vicky and Boronskaja are almost stone-like in their whiteness and occasionally look like funeral sculptures. Terpsichore animates them and their ambitions to serve her spirit, and this animation is symbolised most potently in the bloody, livid redness of the red shoes themselves.

THE FAIRYTALE

The Red Shoes is a film infused with the thick scent of fantasy. It is fantastic in every respect; it is a fairytale about a fairytale. The ballet itself is merely the point when the genuine fairytale is told. At all times The Red Shoes is presenting its story far from the realms of reality. The fact that so many scenes appear overdone, overblown or utterly melodramatic is due entirely to its fantasy nature. Unless the audience suspends its sense of realism and what is possible, the

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13. Hein Heckroth 's set designs for the ballroom scene.

movie makes no sense. This was an important prerequisite and quite a tough one for British audiences and critics bred, as they were, in a cinematic tradition that prided itself on the economical portrayal of real life. Every time the story of the shoes is mentioned, magic seems to descend. When Lermontov tells Julian he needs a score for the story his explanation simply tails away. This is because he is intrigued by Julian's reaction. Julian appears to be lost in his own thoughts, and something deep down inside him has been touched and music is already playing in his mind. The audience is let in on this secret, as the first hints of the Red Shoes score play on the soundtrack. Lermontov is the magician who can conjure up these reactions by animating Julian and Vicky's deepest ambitions. This is seen again when Lermontov meets Vicky on her return; he attempts to woo her back to Monte Carlo saying: 'Nobody has danced The Red Shoes since you left. Nobody else ever shall.' At this Vicky's face seems to plunge into her memories, a smile comes to her and the theme of the ballet magically rises in the background. Theatricality is a key thread in this tapestry of fantasy. Overblown gestures and sets both reflect the nature of the ballet company itself

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but also pose the question of whether life imitates art or vice versa. Irena's decision to announce her engagement is a splendid moment. The corps de ballet gathers round her to shower congratulations. Lermontov looks shocked and surprised and does not join the crowd. Irena desires Lermontov's approbation and so is equally shocked to see that he has gone. In a moment of pure melodrama we see the curtain dividing the rehearsal room billow; Lermontov has clearly disappeared in a state of disgust and contempt. We see Irena run to the curtain calling, 'Boris, Boris'. She stands by the curtain, grasping it, back arched, smooth bosom pushed forwards, head tilted upwards. It has the appearance of a gesture made on stage, accentuated by the curtain and the gaudy, baroque room (the foyer de danse of the Paris Opera House) they are rehearsing in. However, it is also enchanting, it is art and entertainment, the larger-than-life is given to us, which has its own unique beauty, too often misunderstood as cliche. An equally amazing scene, full of theatricality and showing an equal scenic beauty, comes when Julian and Vicky are seen at home together. They are lying in matching beds in a huge room, and the ceiling cannot be seen so high is the room. It looks more like a suite in a grand hotel than a homely bedroom. Julian finds that he has ideas for his opera swimming through his brain and cannot sleep. Vicky seems to be contemplating her life. Julian arises quietly, believing Vicky to be asleep, and goes into the next room where he sits at his grand piano. In the meantime Vicky gets up and goes to a chest of drawers, takes out her red shoes, clasps them to her chest and then replaces them. The sound of Julian playing the piano leads her to him, and we see the equally huge salon containing Julian and his piano. Vicky comes up to him; a mysterious force seems to be holding them together and they embrace. As the camera pulls back it becomes clear that the only illumination comes from a candlebra burning on the piano. Now, how many homes were still lit, or found it convenient to be lit, by candles in post-war Britain is debatable. What is sure is the magical, theatrical effect this scene creates. 'Realism can go hang', Powell and Pressburger appear to be saying, 'why should anyone want it?' Enchantment also fills the scene where Julian and Vicky are called to Lermontov's villa to hear his plans for the new ballet. The viewer

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does not know that Julian is already present; instead it is the presence of Vicky which is all-important to the story. She has accepted Lermontov's summons thinking it is for a formal dinner and so is dressed like a fairytale princess, wearing a little dress crown. She is driven to the villa along corniche roads. Cardiff's photography plays up the beauty of the south of France, and cypresses stand out like polished green marble. On arriving at the villa the fantasy moves up a notch for we see that it stands at the top of a long flight of stone steps. But the honey-coloured stone is no longer kept in pristine condition. Instead, weeds and wild flowers are growing in abundance in the cracks. The combined effect is one of romantic, gothic decay. Powell knew exactly where he wanted to shoot, the Villa Beaulieu. He chose this location deliberately, knowing that it had been neglected during the war and its long flight of steps had become overgrown and slightly shabby. Accompanying this vision is the sound, presumably of the gramophone, playing haunting unidentified songs, possibly of the French Les Six school, that match the landscape perfectly. However, the biggest, grandest, most completely realised enchantment is the ballet itself. As noted, Easdale 's score is truly excellent. He helped spin the web of enchantment by cleverly balancing his approach, for the music hangs between avant-garde, modernist composition and the strictures of classical ballet. The ballet itself, like the whole film, is based on Hans Christian Andersen's story, The Red Shoes, a story of obsession, possession and death. Helpmann's choreography captured these elements brilliantly as did Massine, who devised his own routines as the wicked shoemaker. The ballet is at the same time real, hyper-real and fantastic and its staging owes a good deal to the conventions of cinema musicals for the action takes the audience on a journey far beyond the confines of the theatre itself. We, as the cinema audience, see an odyssey only partially revealed to the audience sitting in the Monte Carlo Opera House in the film itself: as Lermontov says, 'Time rushes by. Love rushes by.' Monk Gibbon, like many others, had worried that the film might destroy ballet by simplifying its technique to suit cinematic stories and cinema audiences. However, Gibbon was brave enough to admit that his rather snobbish reservations were disproved in the case of

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The Red Shoes. He conceded that some simplification had indeed taken place, but the sheer imagination and energy of the ballet sequences created an enchanting whole. Reality, nightmares and sweet dreams overlap and the camera takes the viewer on a magical journey. The 'live' ballet the Monte Carlo audience is watching becomes far more one-dimensional than the rich, complex affair the cinema-goer gains, for Powell and Cardiff used the techniques of Busby Berkeley musicals as the ballet breaks free from the confines of the stage and creates its own realities. As such, Powell, Pressburger and their team departed radically from the leitmotif and celebrated genius of British cinema, naturalistic realism. The ballet is the essence of Powell and Pressburger's agenda for the whole film — an experiment in what might be called 'Gorgeous Modernism'. By that I mean that, like Modernist artists, Powell and Pressburger demand that their film be treated as an artistic piece in its own right with its own conventions which do not necessarily conform easily to the shapes and patterns of 'real life' as we know it, and that in its full-blooded colour and beauty it has a Decadent British campness verging on the gaudy.4 The ballet opens 'realistically'; it shows scenes on a stage which obviously have a clear narrative drive. A young girl is tempted by a pair of red shoes in the shop window of a sinister cobbler, but this introduces the first element of cinematic artifice for she sees her own reflection in the shop window posing with the red shoes on her feet. Unable to resist them, she takes them from the shoemaker and then finds that they magically slip on to her feet and tie themselves. The shoes unleash a passionate energy in the girl and instead of going to church she runs off with her fiance to the fun-fair; the implication being that the sinister shoemaker has lured her into this decision by the power of the red shoes. It is the first hint that the shoemaker is, in fact, the allegorical embodiment of Lermontov, the obsessive controller capable of unleashing beauty, bestowing success, but also destroying and consuming in his passion. Cardiff's camera and Heckroth's sets work brilliantly to make the fair a dualistic location of joyous exuberance and gothic nightmare. It is a world of tempting surface glories hiding hideous realities. As such it mirrors the choices Vicky must make — what is the truly fulfilling option?

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The fun-fair scenes represent the first steps away from the reality of the ballet, for the viewer sees far more of the stalls and booths than any theatre audience could and the grotesque whirl of showmen, colours and fair-goers impresses itself. As the girl attempts to return home at the end of the fair she is drawn back by the shoemaker who suddenly appears, announced by the shadow of his threatening, grasping arms; it is the moment when the horror inflicted by the twin tyrants of genius inspired by art and ambition begins to be exerted. At this point the cinema audience is alone with the ballet and ballerina, and the ballet ceases to be a story concocted for a theatrical audience, it becomes the psychologicalsemiological expression of Vicky's dilemmas, for suddenly, and rather shockingly, the film audience is returned to Vicky's thoughts and the reality of her vision; instead of Massine's face she and we see those of the two men who are influencing her life, Julian and Lermontov. Vicky's dilemma, like the girl in the Red Shoes story, is whether to choose the man she loves or her art and ambition. Foreshadowing what will happen to Vicky herself, the girl is compelled to dance onwards, driven by the demoniacal power of the shoes. Dancing through a strange town in the dead of night she sees news of her fiance in a paper. The newspaper, manipulated by puppeteers with no attempt to disguise the wire, takes the outline of a man and dances with her, and finally becomes Helpmann in a costume made up of newsprint (bearing a remarkable resemblance to the collage works of Picasso). In despair she reaches out for her fiance, but it is too late, for he disappears and the shoes impel her onwards once more. Now the girl dances through an increasingly grotesque and nightmarish landscape inhabited by masked and disfigured people who appear to represent the souls of the damned. Emerging from this nightmare she is allowed one final dream of happiness, a glimpse of what life might have been like had she never put on the red shoes, and the scene transforms into a grand ballroom. Vicky dances a waltz with Helpmann, but then, as the fantasy heightens, Julian leaves his conducting position to partner her. Vicky's dream of happiness with Julian is expressed. In this enchanted moment, scenes reminiscent of oriental folktales are played out for she is transformed first into a lily, then a white dove and finally into a cloud before returning

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14. The realisation of the ballroom scene.

to her human self. This scene of happiness gives way to a storm and her sudden return to her home town and the confines of the theatre; film and theatrical audience are now watching the same ballet again. A church bell rings out calling the people to Sunday service. The congregation files into church soberly dressed in black and white. Vicky catches sight of her former fiance who has now become a chaste clergyman. She flings herself into his arms, but the shoemaker suddenly appears and leads her off into one last maniacal danse macabre suffused by an eerie red light. Then, literally danced to death, she passes away, her legs battered and bloody, only for the shoemaker to recover the red shoes and dance them back into his shop. In the very final scene the shoemaker shows the shoes to the audience, reminding them that their power is ongoing and undiminished. The curtain falls and the applause begins. The ballet's ability to fascinate its viewers is a tribute to Powell and Cardiff's brilliance. Each shot and camera angle was painstakingly constructed to support the underlying themes of the film. Close-ups are used continually to heighten tension and impact, seen most effectively in the rapid cut to Vicky's eyes as she sees her three 'phantoms': the shoemaker, Lermontov and Julian. They are also

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used to create the sense of claustrophobia as she dances through the stalls at the fair; an effect given further emphasis by the tilting of the camera on to a sloping axis. The red shoes themselves are also often seen in close-up, their bloody redness contrasting even more sharply when shot this way with the milky white stockings and flesh of Shearer. Rapid editing and tightly composed shots then dominate the final danse macabre, giving it a feverish intensity and terror. Medium- and long-shots are used only sparingly, and these most orthodox angles often serve to provide the view of the theatre audience watching the 'real ballet', thus hinting at the limitations of reality and strict naturalism. Similarly, the camera rarely takes a conventional 'central stage' position, opting instead for sharp angles cutting across the edges of the stage mirroring the jagged lines separating reality from Vicky's psyche. Occasionally, Cardiff's camera rises above Vicky as if to imply that we are staring down into the maelstrom of her mind. At other points the rhythm, tempo and dynamism of her dancing are brilliantly heightened by tracking shots which keep pace with Vicky before rising above her. The ballet therefore has a heady combination of realism, surrealism and fantasy. This was at the heart of Rank's problems with the film. It all seemed too fantastic to him, and he felt that its surrealist nature would put it beyond the grasp or liking of the vast majority of the cinema-going public. But, even when rooted in reality the film is odd. The location shooting in London, Paris, Monte Carlo and on the Cote d'Azur does lend authenticity. However, the extent to which the locations were real to the British cinema-going public in the late 1940s is extremely debatable. Most of them probably had more chance of going to the moon than attending a ballet in the Monte Carlo Opera House. A similar atmosphere prevails in the home scenes. Covent Garden is portrayed as a crazy mixture: at one and the same time it is the world of the opera house and the central London fruit and vegetable market. The camera sweeps lyrically high above the opera house and the market buildings before swooping down like a London pigeon to capture the Hogarthian bustle of the arcades, and as the camera follows Julian through the crowds snatches of the folk song 'Covent Garden in the Morning' are heard. These scenes have

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something of Humphrey Jennings's lyrical documentary approach about them, and bring to mind the mysterious Chinese penny-whistle player and the seeming incongruity of stumbling on such a person in London's Limehouse in Fires were Started: it celebrates the occasional artistic surrealism and juxtapositions of modern reality. Lermontov's Park Lane apartment is a world beyond the cinema-goer and, even more amazing for a film made in 1948, Lermontov's breakfast table is completely unhindered by the problems of rationing. Lermontov drinks real coffee and carelessly immerses sugar lumps in it. He has piles of exotic fruit on his plate and chooses a ruby grapefruit. Therefore, even mundane events are given a theatrical opulence way beyond the lifestyles and expectations of most Britons. The reality of life in a ballet company is also something shot through with exaggeration and theatricality, as one would expect, although the inspiration of the Ballet Lermontov is clearly that of the Ballet Russe. Lermontov has similarities with Diaghilev, Bassermann as Sergei Ratov has the same kind of easy genius as Bakst, Diaghilev's set designer. And in all this we have genuine ballet stars and see a tiny cameo from the great Madame Rambert herself.

LERMONTOV

As far as performances go, the film is not actually dominated by the dancers. The central performance is that of Walbrook as Lermontov. Lermontov's character is the engine and heart of the narrative, and his character is driven by the desire to control, manipulate and parasitically suck the life from his stars, particularly his prima ballerinas. Lermontov is more than just an impresario: he is a Svengali, a phantom of the opera and, most potently and obviously, a vampire.5 Lermontov is both a man of culture and of a savage inner talent and energy, and as such is a strange mixture of Wildean aestheticism and a Conradian warning to the man who considers himself civilised to the core. Lady Neston, Vicky's aunt, recognises this in him straight away, referring to him as an 'attractive brute'. Later, when Ratov is despairing at Lermontov's utter disgust at Vicky and Julian's love affair, he quotes Vicky's letter referring to him as 'a gifted, cruel monster'. This core of wild power explodes in impotent

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rage when, sitting in his Paris apartment — another vision of a world beyond most of the audience — he grows more and more angry as he thinks of Vicky's love for Julian, and leaps up and smashes the great mirror above the fireplace with his fist. (The breaking of mirrors does, of course, have all sorts of superstitious and fairytale-like associations and qualities.) It is exactly this vast emotional energy that is at the heart of his creativity, however, for like all great artists and creators he knows that beauty comes from conflict. According to Lermontov, only deeply-held passions can create great art, and consequently he is seen to enjoy the arguments between Vicky and Julian in rehearsal: this is proof to him that they are taking their work seriously and are intent on getting the best from each other and themselves. Suffering is therefore part of his creed; art is like religion in so far as much of it is based on suffering and pain. He remarks that great simplicity is achieved only by great agony.6 For Lermontov all that matters is art. Art must be sweated for, fought for and, if necessary, it must result in the greatest sacrifice of all. For this reason he particularly enjoys the spats between Vicky and Julian over the correct timing. As a perfectionist he wants to see others feeling the same agonies and ecstasies. Art, and dance in particular, is actually higher than humanity for it is pure, and, like music, 'in the precision of its form and the mathematical tyranny of its laws, escapes into an eternity of abstraction and absurd sublime that is everywhere and nowhere at once'. 7 The valuing of dance over music, despite Lermontov's protestation that 'nothing matters but the music', is given great emphasis by Powell and Cardiff's camerawork in the final rehearsal for the Red Shoes ballet. When the camera frames Craster, it does so from a high angle looking down into the orchestra pit, which is lit with an almost infernal orange: he and the orchestra share a nether world. By contrast, the camera takes Craster's view of Vicky, looking upwards at her, emphasising her stature and authority and bathing her in a celestial blue light. The wild, overblown nature of all this makes the film, and Lermontov's character in particular, a joy to behold. The audience is both repelled and fascinated by his ability to override ordinary human desires or hold them in contempt. Lermontov is disgusted by Boronskaja's engagement. As she goes on stage he

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mutters to the assembled corps de ballet that she is finished: 'The dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love will never be a great dancer. Never.' Grischa says, 'But you can't alter human nature'; to which Lermontov replies, 'No, but I think you can do even better than that, you can ignore it.' This commitment to art over and above any other human or moral instinct is probably another reason why the Quaker Arthur Rank had problems with the film. As noted, the creed is dangerously close to that held by the late nineteenth-century aesthetes like Wilde and Beardsley who believed in art for art's sake. Powell himself said the film seemed almost irreverent in this sense, as for five years people had been told to sacrifice themselves for democracy and human rights and then his film suddenly said that art alone is worth suffering and dying for. He is also the connoisseur par excellence, the man who recognises talent, beauty and genius when he sees it. It takes him only a few moments to see Vicky's qualities when he first watches her dance at the Mercury Theatre. Later, in the final minutes before her debut in The Red Shoes, he tells her that he wants her to dance as she has done only once before. Instinctively Vicky knows what he is referring to, stating 'at the Mercury Theatre in Hampstead'. The master creator and his master creation are thinking alike. Significantly, one of the ballets Vicky later performs for the Ballet Lermontov company is La Boutique Fantasque, the story of a toy-maker who creates a mechanical doll that comes to life. Lermontov recognises genius but wants it under his own control. Throughout the film Lermontov's physical presence is most striking. He has the appearance and nature of a vampire. Like all vampires he has that paradoxical appearance of bloodlessness and livid whiteness. We rarely see him in anything other than his beautifully cut black suit with his equally marvellous shoes. He cuts an ironic figure in the bright light of Monte Carlo standing around in his dark colours. He seems to shun the light; in fact, it almost seems to hurt him. He wears sunglasses and rarely allows the light to fall fully across his face. When he is seen, he is often standing in the shadows. In one beautifully contrived scene he stands on the stage and the spotlights catch his lower half and throw a shadow downwards, but his upper half is firmly in the darkness lit only by a

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great puff of white smoke from his cigarette. But, like all vampires, when we do get to see his eyes they are full of intensity. There is a manic, energetic glint. Powell and Cardiff as masters of the visual communicate this most effectively, often by the technique of rapid cross-cutting to a close-up of his eyes. These shots serve to emphasise his almost animal ability instantaneously to judge mood and atmosphere. This is communicated when he smashes the mirror and most strikingly when his eyes meet Vicky's at the Mercury Theatre, Hampstead. The camera zooms in on his eyes and then rapidly cuts back to Vicky's face, showing her eyes in close-up and implying that a strange symbiotic link between the two has been forged. The way Vicky's eyes often seem to mirror those of Lermontov's is reminiscent of the way Vivien Leigh used her eyes in Gone with the Wind and brings to mind the technique of Bette Davis and Celia Johnson: eyes provide stunning, 'freeze-frame' shorthand for various emotional reactions. As a vampire Lermontov survives by emotional ensanguination: he sucks real blood only once — his own after he has injured himself smashing the mirror. Instead, Lermontov's strength comes from sucking the emotions from his prima ballerinas. Like the victim of a vampire, Boronskaja is wan and white throughout, and, like the demonic pull of a vampire, ultimately she cannot live without Lermontov and comes back to him leaving her husband behind. Vicky is equally pale throughout, but we see her blood in three ways, in the passion of her dancing, in the bloody redness of the shoes themselves and in the flames of her red hair. Her 'triple redness' denotes that she is the greatest prize: Lermontov can gorge and satiate himself on her. She becomes the supreme object of desire for Lermontov and he sees himself as her creator, confessor and captor. After her first great success in The Red Shoes he grasps her hand and says: 'I want to create. To make something big out of something little. To make a great dancer out of you ... Not a word. I will do the talking. You will do the dancing.' Lermontov's obsession with Vicky means that he is unable to understand her love affair with Julian. To him it is a contemptible, squalid thing, besmirched by being so awfully human. It is the expression of that marvellous Alan Bennett line: 'I find that when

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15. Hein Heckroth 's set designs for the fair scene.

people say that they are only human it normally means that they have been making beasts of themselves.' Lermontov explodes with anger when he sees Julian blow a kiss to Vicky and is determined to engineer his removal. He provokes Julian to argument and then sacks him, telling his assistant with a chilling power: 'Mr Craster has been unwise to interfere with certain plans of mine and that is something I will not permit.' He then tries to persuade Vicky that she should stay with the company and not follow Julian back to London: I could make you one of the greatest dancers the world has ever known. Do you believe that?

LERMONTOV:

VICKY: Yes. I do.

And all that means nothing to you? You know exactly what that means to me.

LERMONTOV: VICKY:

And yet Vicky leaves for London. In a fit of pique Lermontov considers taking out an injunction against her, thus destroying her career. His eventual decision is a little kinder. He allows her to dance but forbids any other company to stage The Red Shoes and withdraws it from his own repertoire at the same time. His creation

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with Vicky is therefore put to death and it can only be recovered in the memory. In London, Vicky is haunted by her divided conscience. She needs to dance, but also wants to be a good wife to Julian. This internal debate only inflames her confusion still further and her own desires and ambitions begin to win control. T h e scene then cuts to Lermontov's office. H e is on the verge of conceding, and is considering swallowing his pride and writing to her. But, just at that moment, he hears that she has come to Monte Carlo with her aunt. H e knows that she has been unable to resist the call of her art, ambition and himself, just as Dracula in his many forms succeeds in drawing Mina and Lucy Westenra to him by his nightly tapping at their bedroom windows. H e meets her at the railway station — almost like a demented version of Brief Encounter. H e tells her that he is always looking for great dancers and asks her if she will come back. Their exchange continues the theme outlined in the dialogue above: VICKY: I haven't danced very much you know. LERMONTOV: Would he give it up if you asked him? [Julian's opera, Cupid and Psyche] VICKY: I don't know. LERMONTOV: YOU do know. VICKY: I wouldn't ask him.

LERMONTOV: Then why is he asking you? Does he know what he's asking? Eventually, after much persuasion both subtle and unsubtle, he says: 'Put on the red shoes, Vicky, and dance for us again.' It is too much. Vicky cannot deny her art or her burning ambition and puts aside her human love for that of art by agreeing to dance The Red Shoes. This paves the way to the final scene of the movie, which is a mad denouement, theatrical, over the top, intense and violent, lushly overacted and terrific entertainment. A Faustian scene occurs as both Lermontov and Julian commence a duel for her soul. Julian rushes through her dressing-room door having abandoned his opening night in London in order to persuade her to return with him. Julian, unlike Vicky, has managed to suppress all his artistic ambitions for

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the person he loves: this signals the fundamental difference between Vicky and himself. (He had already hinted at this character facet in the final moments before the debut of the Red Shoes ballet for, realising that Vicky is nervous, he tells her that he will conduct according to her tempo not that on his written score. He, as the composer of the ballet, was prepared to sacrifice his writing for her sake.) Lermontov then enters with his eyes flashing. Walbrook's acting in this scene is glorious. He builds himself up into a frenzy, a control freak, a vampire going mad, imploding on his desires: LERMONTOV: Tell him why you have left him. Nobody can have two lives and your life is dancing ... Would you be satisfied with anything less than the best? If you would, you would never be a great artist, perhaps you never will. And would you make her a great dancer as well? Never. Why do you think I've waited day after day since you snatched her away from me, for a chance to win her back. JULIAN: Because you're jealous of her. LERMONTOV: Yes, I am, but in a way in which you will never understand. 8 Vicky has little to do while all this is going on. She looks terrified, overwhelmed by emotions way beyond her control or understanding. A feminist reading might well suggest that Vicky is struggling with the dilemma faced by so many women, that of constriction and limitation in a male-dominated world: neither man in her life will allow her to fulfil both her professional and personal ambitions; it is a world in which she emphatically cannot have both. Julian, sensing Vicky's confusion, takes it as a symbol of their fatal estrangement. Her simple signals of doubt and dilemma are enough for him, he concedes defeat and walks away, broken. Lermontov believes he has scored his greatest victory and whispers to her in a faintly scary way: 'Vicky. Vicky. Little Vicky. There it is all waiting for you. T h e sorrow will pass, believe me. Life is unimportant. And, from now onwards, you will dance like nobody ever before.' Lermontov looks ecstatic, it might almost be said coital in his exhilaration, for he clasps his hands together and shakes in a climax of victory. But as Vicky walks out of her dressing room a strange possession

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takes hold of her, just as in the ballet itself the shoes take on a life of their own — or is it her own power subconsciously pushing her towards disaster? She runs from the theatre, descending at incredible speed down a spiral staircase emphasising her collapse into madness, confusion and despair, and throws herself from the balcony on to the railway line below.9 Her smashed body is now red with blood. Her wounded feet — ironically like the wounds of Christ — are crimson like the shoes. Her dying request to Julian is that he should take off the red shoes thus releasing her from the spell. Torn between the agony of a life with Julian, the man she loves but can never feel quite content with, and her art and ambition which will mean the subjugation of every other desire, she has taken the only option capable of releasing her from these twin torments — death. An insanely distraught Lermontov tells the audience that Vicky cannot dance but the ballet will go ahead without her, with the spotlight following the moves she would have made. He screams at the audience, 'like a trapped animal in agony' as Michael Powell put it.10 Given Lermontov's cool assurance in public and the impression that he would always get his own way, this openly shattered facade is extremely jarring and effective. Lermontov's final line reinforces the indivisible link between Vicky and her art, for he states: 'It is the ballet that made her name. Whose name she made.' The very last shot of the film is of Lermontov and then the shoes, once again affirming that he, dance and art are the central points of the film, not the human dancer. Then, in an extremely interesting inversion of what the viewer would expect from a film about art, dance and music, the credits roll silently. Amazingly, The Red Shoes ends in silence.

THREE Reception and Legacy

Having been so unimpressed with the preview, Arthur Rank decided not to support The Red Shoes with a lavish publicity campaign, give the film a gala premiere or distribute it widely. Instead, it was released with very little ceremony at the Gaumont, Haymarket, not the prestige Odeon, Leicester Square, which the Archers had come to expect for their films, on 20 July 1948. Contrary to most of the received wisdom on Powell and Pressburger, the critical reception of The Red Shoes was not entirely derogatory and disgusted. Almost every film critic, historian and commentator who has ever written about The Red Shoes and Powell and Pressburger has maintained the idea that the film was largely panned by the British critics and that these two visionary prophets were once again unrecognised in their own country. This position very nearly reaches cliche: as artists in a British cinema obsessed with workman-like qualities, Powell and Pressburger were doomed to trudge lonely paths. According to this interpretation, The Red Shoes was a great work of art placed before uncomprehending Philistines. In fact, for such an unheralded and hard to find film, The Red Shoes actually proved a great success according to certain far from insignificant indicators. Once again Daily Mail readers approved of a Powell and Pressburger product highly in the paper's poll of the year's best films. It came third, just behind Spring in Park Lane and Oliver Twist. Even more interesting was the impact of Shearer, for she soared straight into the top ten favourite actresses sharing this billing with established stars such as Vivien Leigh, Valerie Hobson, Anna Neagle and Patricia Roc.1 The largely middle-class readers of the Daily Mail again provide proof that, on the whole, British

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cinema-goers had far more eclectic tastes than many commentators and film historians have realised. Picking a path through the critical reception is a complicated task for there are no simple divisions between those who liked the film and those who did not. There certainly was not a great contrast between the opinions expressed in the ranks of the popular press on one side and the quality broadsheets on the other. A closer examination of the responses reveals a more complex and mixed picture. The Times, like the Daily Graphic, gave it a rather lukewarm reception. Anton Walbrook was praised for his performance, but it was noted that Lermontov's company was far removed from the reality of the ballet world.2 The major point of contention for many was this lack of 'reality', with the ballet sequences picked out for most criticism. In an otherwise highly enthusiastic review, the Sunday Chronicles Paul Dehn was at a loss on this issue and could not understand why the ballet had segued into fantasy sequences.3 Milton Schulman expressed extreme disapproval in the Evening Standard and sarcastically wondered whether Powell and Pressburger were trying to compete with the Ponchielli ballet scene in Disney's Fantasia} Cliche-ridden was Richard Buckle's judgement, while A. V. Cotton wrote, 'This film wins my Oscar as the biggest, loudest and Technicolorest film-about-ballet-which-doesn't-quite-get-there to 5 date ... ' Increasingly adverse to the output of the Archers, the trade and specialist press were not far behind. Seemingly unable to escape an obsession with documentary reality, praise was mixed with utter incomprehension. Arthur Vesselo, correspondent for Sight and Sound, found some things to admire deeply, but felt the 'stupid' plot undermined it.6 The Monthly Film Bulletin complimented the performances of Goring and Shearer, and Easdale 's score, but was stumped by Walbrook's role stating that he 'is perhaps the least impressive in an exacting "Serge DiaghilefF" role and has a number of, at times, irritating mannerisms'.7 The reviewer obviously did not stop to consider whether this exaggerated style was the entire point. The Daily Film Renter was equally divided in its response, praising certain aspects and expressing severe doubts over others: 'Powell and Pressburger have once again fumbled over a fine idea, and their opulent work trembles between the heights and the depths.

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16. The girl (Moira Shearer) is captivated by the red shoes and must dance.

On balance an exciting novelty with stirring moments for class audiences, a feast for ballet fans, and an impressive advertisement for the potentialities of British production.' 8 Rather strangely, the interpretation in the US journal Films in Review rested almost entirely on points about dancing and ballet and completely ignored The Red Shoes as a film. Ian Christie has noted that the ballet sequences in the film caused many journals and newspapers to use specialist critics with an expertise in dance. This might explain why Marian Eames's review was unceasing in its criticism. She condemned the subjective (i.e. Vicky's vision) side of the ballet for bewildering and corrupting the integrity of the ballet sequence, she believed the dancing lacked 'balletic [and] dramatic distinction', was hackneyed in its choreography, and under-utilised the talents of Shearer, Massine and Helpmann. For an American she revealed a very British interest in the reality of a ballet company, noting that she much preferred the documentary films Steps of the Ballet and Ballerina. She ended on what was clearly supposed to

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be a crushing epithet: 'The Red Shoes gives us only Ballet, and Russian Ballet at that — all glamor and preposterous romance.' 9 As with the review in the Monthly Film Bulletin, at no point did Eames appear to consider whether she was actually approaching the film from the w r o n g angle. Ten years later, Robert Helpmann's biographer touched upon similar points. Katherine Sorley Walker appeared utterly trapped by the confines of the stage and could not appreciate the magic of cinema: Its [the Red Shoes ballet] weakness lay in the departure from the illusion of stage ballet to the limitless and lush spaces reflecting the ballerina's thought. This was less successfully handled than the rest of the ballet, where visual excellences of movement and repose were created. A filmed ballet, however, is hardly representative of a choreographer's work — there are too many factors involved — and as far as dancing went, The Red Shoes barely suggested Helpmann's capabilities as a performer.10 Elsewhere the reception was more positive, if occasionally baffled. C. A. Lejeune, influential critic of the high-brow Observer, called it a perfect marriage of colour and movement, and although she admitted it was not to everyone's taste, it did have immense passion: A film that is in love with the ballet is clearly not going to be everybody's love; but enthusiasm is a strong infection, and any picture that deals as single-heartedly with its subjects as The Red Shoes (Gaumont) will have something to say to people who know what it is to concentrate passionately on one job, to live for it and live in it.11 T h a t other doyenne of British film critics, Dilys Powell, was also impressed, calling it 'an extreme pleasure' and 'brilliantly experimental' in the Sunday Times}1 Both the Daily Mirror and the Evening News referred to the spontaneous applause that greeted the conclusion of the ballet during the press preview. T h e Daily Mirror was enchanted by Shearer's performance, as was Jympson Harman in the Evening News, whose only criticism was the rather gory ending.13 Writing for the Daily Mail, Fred Majdalany understood what so many others in the specialist press did not: 'This is not merely a

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new ballet, but a ballet conceived in term of cinema and brilliantly using cinema mechanics to switch between fantasy and reality in a manner impossible on stage.'14 On the other hand, it is difficult to know quite whether W. A. Wilcox's review constituted unqualified praise: 'The nearest thing to a dope-addict's dream ... a brilliant wedding between Covent Garden and film craft.'15 Others were not nearly so ambiguous. The popular Daily Herald complained bitterly about the storyline: 'Having spent more than £250,000 on production, the makers, I meekly suggest, might have sent someone a postal order for a better plot.'16 As is proved by these responses, simplistic divides cannot be made nor can it be safely assumed that the film failed utterly to receive sympathetic treatment from the critics. The criticisms that were raised were answered most fully by Monk Gibbon, an Irish academic, poet and cultural critic, who explained the nature of the film in his specially commissioned accompanying book, The Red Shoes Ballet: A Critical Study, produced by the specialist art and music publishing company, Saturn Press. The gestation of Gibbon's book is unclear, but it must have been agreed to before production commenced, for it contains interviews with the cast and crew conducted during the making. The sheer fact that this glossy, high-quality work was produced at all suggests the desire to provide a chronicle of this prestige film (not to mention another marketing outlet), even if Rank was having doubts. Gibbon freely admitted that he doubted whether ballet and film could be coupled effectively, particularly the sections of the Red Shoes ballet which enter into a fantasy world, 'I was highly sceptical as to the possibilities ... I felt critical towards it. It had almost my antipathy.'17 However, he was converted by the sheer professionalism and artistic zeal of Powell, Pressburger and their team, and came to understand and appreciate the challenges thrown down by the film. Unlike many other critics, of both the film and dance variety, Gibbon realised that something more than the creation of reality lay behind the film, especially in the ballet: Our minds will be asked to function on three planes: direct realism — that is the actual stage on which the ballet was being danced a moment before, and with which we seem to have lost complete touch

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now; a certain degree of indirect realism, as when Lermontov and Craster emerge in the sub-conscious 'as large as life and twice as natural'; and finally pure fantasy.18 According to Gibbon, Powell and Pressburger deserved praised for their attempt to combine high art with popular cinema. T h o u g h not a smash hit in Britain the film certainly did better than Rank feared, as is shown by its popularity among Daily Mail readers who were surely closer to the mass of the British cinemagoing public than the trade and specialist press. Its sheer escapist opulence brought light and colour to a nation caught in the depression of rationing, cold and general austerity. However, it was in the USA that The Red Shoes really made its name and became a most unexpected success for Rank. Initially, the omens did not look good; Variety's correspondent seemed a little uncertain as to whether the film had the ability to penetrate the American market: 'Although the heavy accent on ballet was seen as limiting appeal to more discriminating audiences, the pic's melodramatic romance, pace and brilliant coloring is likely to give it b[ox] o[ffice] weight in general situations.' 19 In addition, as Geoffrey McNab has shown, Powell and Pressburger films had an extremely inconsistent record in the States. To make a profit in North America, it was generally reckoned that a film had to earn $2 million, and even a Hollywood B movie was expected to take some $500,000. W h e n put into this perspective the sorry tale of the Archers in the USA and Canada is pulled into sharp focus. Although 49th Parallel and A Matter of Life and Death had been successes, One of Our Aircraft is Missing had taken only $478,939, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was even less in tune with American tastes, making $305,943.20 Given this track record, and Rank's doubts about the film in the domestic market, his reluctance to push it hard in the USA is understandable. However, William Heinmann, vice-president of Eagle-Lion, one of Rank's US distributors, had seen the film with his wife and children and had been impressed by their very positive reactions. He took the decision to run the film in the small, 500-seat, Bijou Cinema on New York's Broadway. It was a calculated risk designed

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17. The danse infernale showing the girl's enslavement to the shoemaker. to exploit the increasingly significant 'art-house' market in the USA. As Thomas Schatz has demonstrated, from 1945 cinema-going in the USA entered into a period of mutation. Prestige foreign productions came to enjoy far more success both critically and among the

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viewing public. H e highlighted the impact of high-quality British movies such as Brief Encounter (1945), Great Expectations (1946), Odd Man Out (1947) and Hamlet (1948). With this side of the market increasing, many cinema operators expanded their art-house outlets, most of which were in the big cities. In 1949 Variety reported that 226 theatres regularly showed foreign movies and identified the existence of fifty-seven 'strictly artfilm theaters'. N e w York was the undoubted centre of this trend with some thirty art houses 'devoted to foreign films and to the burgeoning market of cinephiles'. 21 The Red Shoes was released at just the right moment to capitalise on this audience. Bosley Crowther immediately whipped up interest with a glowing review for the New York Times-. Over the years, there have been several movies in which attempts have been made to capture the spirit and the beauty, the romance and the enchantment of the ballet. And, inevitably, in these pictures, ballets have been performed, a few times with charm and sincerity but more often — and unfortunately — without. However, there has never been a picture in which the ballet and its special, magic world have been so beautifully and dreamily presented as the new British film, The Red Shoes. Here, in this unrestricted romance, which opened at the Bijou yesterday, is a visual and emotional comprehension of all the grace and rhythm and power of the ballet. Here is the color and excitement, the strange intoxication of the dancer's life. And here is the rapture and the heartbreak which only the passionate and the devoted can know ... The Red Shoes is a film you must see.22 T h e film commenced a record-breaking n o - w e e k unbroken run at the Bijou and certainly passed the $2 million mark. In fact, according to certain calculations, The Red Shoes is still the most popular British film ever to hit the US market. A few years after its original release, Variety placed it in its top fifty grossing films ever, and, if Michael Powell's claims in Million Dollar Movie are to be believed, since 1948 it has made some $25 million worldwide. 2 3 It resulted in a wonderful irony: a party to celebrate the film was thrown by Governor Denver of Boston during which he telephoned Arthur

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Rank to congratulate him on his triumph. As Jack Cardiff remarked, 'I'd like to have seen Mr Rank's face . . . '24 T h e success of The Red Shoes at that year's Oscars ceremony reflected the impact it made in the USA. Hein Heckroth took the prize for colour art direction, Arthur Lawson for colour set direction, and Brian Easdale became the first British composer to win an Oscar for his music. T h e r e was one shock, however: Jack Cardiff did not take his second Oscar in as many years for best cinematography despite being a hot favourite. New York's Daily News had led the pack, stating: 'Without further ado, we hereby pronounce, at even money, that The Red Shoes will calmly walk away with the colour cinematography and Art Direction awards this March.' 25 In his autobiography, Cardiff notes that many people had told him to expect the award, but he was then informed that a meeting of the American Society of Cameramen had decided to exclude him from the nominations. T h e reasoning behind the decision was to protect the image of the American film industry, for if Cardiff, a foreigner, took the prize it would lower the prestige of Hollywood. Some consolation was provided by the trade paper, Film Daily, which presented him with its award for best colour photography. 2 6 And, at the end of the year, the National Board of Review included it in the ten best films of the year, sharing the line-up with such titles as The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Day of Wrath, Joan of Arc and another British film, Hamlet. After The Red Shoes Powell and Pressburger made some very good films, two of which were direct successors in terms of style and intent, The Tales of Hoffmann (19 51) and Oh Rosalinda!! (1955), but they never quite achieved the same heights of invention or brilliance. Despite scoring a success with The Red Shoes, neither Rank nor the Archers felt inclined to continue their association and they parted company. Alexander Korda stepped in to produce the next clutch of Archers' films which commenced with The Small Back Room (1949). Although a story seemingly utterly disconnected from that of The Red Shoes, this adaptation of Nigel Balchin's novel set in dreary, wartime London did have some similarities. Sammy, brilliantly played by David Farrar, is a self-pitying bomb-disposal expert who seeks solace in drink. Like Vicky in The Red Shoes, Sammy's existence becomes fixated on one particular ambition, only in this case it is to

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defuse a bomb and win back self-respect. Excellently shot in a German Expressionist style by Cardiff's close colleague Chris Challis, The Small Back Room is a genuinely gritty, intriguing and disturbing film. Its most famous shot has become a tour de force of cinema as a huge whisky bottle looms over Sammy's hallucinations. Interestingly, at the time this was the one element the critics disliked. The reason was simple — it was unrealistic in a film that otherwise appeared to herald the return of the Archers to the fold of British cinema. If The Small Back Room was hardly the type of film Korda expected, their next project was certainly much closer to his heart, a lavish costume drama, The Elusive Pimpernel (1950). It did not turn out as Korda expected. Instead of sumptuous sets, Heckroth's designs mimicked theatrical scenery and hinted at extravagance rather than re-create it. The plot line was then an amalgam of dance and music interspersed with French and English dialogue. Korda's co-backer, Samuel Goldwyn, was not that impressed and neither were the viewing public and the film sank without trace. To a certain extent The Elusive Pimpernel can be compared with The End of the River in so far as both lack discipline and feel like rushed jobs. Another costume drama followed, Gone to Earth (1950), a bodice-ripping melodrama set in Shropshire. Once again Chris Challis's photography was excellent, showing that he could match Cardiff's understanding of Technicolor. The full, poetic power of the landscape was captured by Challis. He managed to merge A. E. Housman's land of lost content with Mary Webb's tale of a doomed heroine. David Farrar played the wicked squire with his usual excellence, providing further proof of his much underrated talents. However, Jennifer Jones's performance as Hazel was extremely patchy. Praised for her role in Duel in the Sun, David O. Selznick was no doubt pleased that his leading lady took a part in this prestige production, but she had great trouble mastering an English accent and despite the enormous bravado and physicality she brought to the role, this problem with dialogue never quite faded into the background. Released to mixed reviews and audience reactions, Gone to Earth is now regarded by some as a minor classic of British cinema and Pam Cook has referred to Jones's 'utterly convincing performance'.27 With their next film the Archers returned to the themes and

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18. Grischa (Massine) congratulates Vicky (Shearer) on her success in the opening night o/The Red Shoes.

concepts of The Red Shoes. Pressburger believed the magical, musical and composed qualities of The Red Shoes expressed the true artistic and intellectual qualities of the Archers and was keen to find a similar subject. As Valerie Hobson recalled, Pressburger was a man with an ardent interest in music who looked for ways to express that passion continually: 'He was extremely knowledgeable technically and very excited by somebody who obviously didn't know anything about it, but was very anxious to learn. Unlike Micky, Emeric never became very animated, maybe if he was talking about a script, but true animation came when he was listening to music and describing it.'28 He spent much time casting around for ideas and found the perfect inspiration in Beecham's suggestion of an adaptation of Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann (1881). An opera with a strong story set in weird and wonderful settings, it lent itself to cinema. Its somewhat strange plot has been very neatly summarised by Kevin Macdonald: It is loosely based on three tales by the romantic, gothic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann, and the character of the writer himself both narrates the stories and is their protagonist. The guiding theme is Hoffmann's

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search for 'Love — his eternal companion'. In the prologue he falls in love with the lovely prima donna Stella. Leaving the theatre during the interval of her performance, Hoffmann goes to the local tavern where the students ask him to tell them a story. He tells them of his three great loves: Olympia, who turned out to be a mechanical doll; Giuletta, the Venetian courtesan who tried to steal his soul; and Antonia, the consumptive singer who died by singing a passionate song when she shouldn't. Each story ends with Hoffmann's rival — probably an evil emanation of his own psyche — stealing or destroying his love. At the end of the last story Hoffmann collapses dead drunk just as Stella enters the tavern; and she is led away again by the eternal rival. But then the muse of poetry 'appears in a halo of light' and, in a moment of epiphany, bids Hoffmann to a life of literature. 29 T h e plot therefore contained themes the Archers had already tackled in The Red Shoes: art and artistic ambition over human love, women who are controlled like toys, and Antonia who knows her art may kill her but accepts that fatal challenge. Macdonald has listed further similarities between Hoffmann and the wider output of the Archers. Namely that as in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, the hero has three great loves; and, as in The Red Shoes, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and / Know Where I'm Going, Hoffmann lives out much of his life in his own head and imagination and ignores the realities around him. 30 Needing a backer for the film, the Archers turned to Korda. Although a devotee of high-quality, sumptuous productions, Korda was at first sceptical that an opera could be translated to the screen and achieve audience numbers. However, he was impressed by the promise of another film starring Moira Shearer, who had proved so enchanting to critics and public alike. In fact, as with The Red Shoes, Shearer was at first reluctant to commit herself, and Pressburger had to maintain a vigorous charm offensive to win her over. He promised high-quality ballet sequences choreographed by the rising star of British ballet, Frederick Ashton, and the chance to star once again with Helpmann and Massine. The Tales of Hoffmann was announced as the Archers' next project

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in October 1949 and two months later Heckroth began preliminary work on designs. The real work commenced in February 1950 when the key members of the Archers team - Powell, Pressburger, Easdale, Challis, Streeter and Heckroth — sat down with Beecham to go through the opera. Beecham was the ideal collaborator for he had a deep knowledge of Offenbach's music and had conducted the first British production of the opera in 1910. Beecham played through the entire piece on the piano and sang the parts. Between them they cut the three-hour opera down to two hours fifteen minutes, and it was agreed that Beecham would pick the main singers and that the London Philharmonic Orchestra would record the music. Beecham invited Robert Rounseville, a rising American singer, to take the part of Hoffmann and Ann Ayars to take the part of Antonia. Although an accomplished singer, none of her six previous films had made use of this skill. At the same time, Beecham and Pressburger worked on the story, making some alterations to the original plot. The most significant change was the construction of a ballet sequence from the opera's main musical motifs, which was then choreographed by Ashton. Pressburger was content to work on the overall structure of the film, composing it as a whole, which left the detailed work on the reshaping of the libretto to Dennis Arundel, a fine musician who played the bandleader in the Berlin cafe scene in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. The corps de ballet from The Red Shoes was then reassembled, which was a very shrewd move for they were now all dancers with experience of film-making and therefore understood from the start that it was a different art to staged ballet. Initially, the Archers toyed with the idea of shooting the film in European opera houses; however, the probability of enormous costs ruled out this idea. Heckroth then turned all his attention to the production of studio set designs. Ironically, The Tales of Hoffmann actually marked Heckroth's most theatrical expressions. He made absolutely no attempt to replicate reality; instead, all his efforts and inventiveness were applied to the creation of fairytale sets which were part gothic fantasy and part comic book. The film was then shot on the biggest stage in Europe, Shepperton's grand stage. Unchanged since the early 1920s, the grand stage was silent. However, this did not matter for the entire soundtrack had been pre-recorded. As

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19. Robert Helpmann andMoira Technicolor camera,

Shearer on set with the specially

mounted

Chris Challis, Technicolor cinematographer on the film, remarked, the decision to pre-record the soundtrack reveals that it was Powell and Pressburger's ultimate composed film. The music and singing took precedence and the film was then constructed around them. Martin Scorsese agrees with this judgement: 'Ultimately, Powell/ Pressburger's major and most successful cinematic experiment was the "composed film", best represented by The Tales of Hoffmann. Scenes were staged, designed and constructed in pursuit of an organic whole inspired by music. Color was given a narrative function, creating moving paintings.'31 The decision to use the grand stage and pre-record technique had further advantages for it allowed the crew to talk during filming, giving Powell and Challis the ability to intervene continually. It also allowed the Technicolor camera to be taken out of its cumbersome soundproofed casing giving it far more mobility and flexibility. Shooting lasted eleven and a half weeks and cost £300,000, a modest sum given the technical complexity of the film. Probably guided by the success of The Red Shoes in the USA, The Tales of Hoffmann was premiered at New York's Metropolitan

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Opera House on i April 1951; the first time a film had ever been shown there. Revealing their sense of patriotism and reflecting the fact that it was Festival of Britain year, the film's final credit shows Beecham closing his score upon which is the rubber-stamped logo 'Made in England'. It received a rapturous reception and, eventually, a fan letter from the great Cecil B. de Mille. It received its London premiere on 18 April and was given an equally warm welcome from the audience and glowing reviews in the Daily Telegraph and The Times, although others were more mixed. The Daily Graphics response encapsulates the bewilderment some still felt at Powell and Pressburger's wild flights of cinematic fantasy: 'if Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann had to be put on screen, I don't suppose anyone could have done it more handsomely or ingeniously ... But why do it?'32 Given the excitement the film had inspired, Korda had high hopes of winning the Grand Prix at Cannes, but felt it needed pruning. Powell had already removed Pamela Brown's spoken epilogue, reducing the running time by twelve minutes, but Korda now suggested the removal of Antonia's scene entirely. An argument ensued which severely embittered relations with Korda, but worse still it appeared to have sparked distrust between Powell and Pressburger, for Powell later claimed that Pressburger agreed with this plan. Macdonald's biography of Pressburger denies this claim, and it does seem farfetched given Pressburger's intense passion for music and the project. In the event, the film took the special prize, and further accolades came in Heckroth's Academy nominations for both art direction and costume design. Despite this praise and publicity, The Tales of Hoffmann was released only at selected cinemas, where it did very good business, but it meant the film made no more than a very modest profit. The reason why The Tales of Hoffmann failed to succeed quite as spectacularly as The Red Shoes in the art-house cinemas probably reflected the further decline of the American cinema market, and more importantly that, in fact, it isn't quite as good as The Red Shoes, Divided into very definite scenes and sequences, each of which is absolutely spectacular, The Tales of Hoffmann lacks an overall driving thrust, and Rounseville's performance, the linchpin of the piece, does not equal Walbrook's riveting interpretation of Lermontov which is at the heart of The Red Shoes?1

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Powell and Pressburger made one more composed film, Oh, Rosalinda// (1955). Losely based on Richard Strauss's Die Fledermaus, it starred Michael Redgrave, Anthony Quayle, Ludmilla Tcherina, Anton Walbrook and Anneliese Rothenberger, and it proved to be an extremely problematic project. Pressburger, a great devotee of the opera, had the imaginative, if slightly ludicrous, idea of transposing the story of raffish, glorious, gaudy late nineteenth-century Vienna on to the realities of modern Vienna, resulting in something akin to a comic opera version of The Third Man\ Unsurprisingly, gaining financing for the film proved a long and difficult affair, and when shooting finally began in January 1954, the funding package was still not quite in place. Shot in the relatively new CinemaScope process, it created many difficulties for Chris Challis and his crew, and in addition Challis was not impressed with the new colour system which went with it. As with The Tales of Hoffmann, the entire soundtrack was pre-recorded with a new libretto by Dennis Arundel, and the film was then constructed around it. Eventually a bright and breezy film was created, rather spoiled by an over-long final scene, but it definitely lacks the sheer vivacity, inventiveness and brilliance of both The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann. It proved to be a box-office disaster; the Archers not so much failing to keep up with public taste as failing to provide a film good enough to lure them into the cinema. Finding an American distributor was an exceptionally difficult task, even after Variety ranked it a modest success. The only distributor willing to take it wanted to use it as part of a television spectacular — a highly revealing comment on the nature of the American cinema market by the mid-1950s — but this fell through, meaning that Oh, Rosalinda// was never released in the USA. The Powell and Pressburger relationship was now coming towards its conclusion, but not before they had made two highly successful box-office hits, both of which are now treated with great derision by film critics, The Battle of the River Plate (1956) and 77/ Met by Moonlight (1957). Often written off as typical of the stiff-upper-lip 1950s British war film genre, both are, in fact, far more interesting than many realise. The Battle of the River Plate was actually a very personal film for Michael Powell, as he had always wanted to make

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a naval drama. Shot in Technicolor and with the full assistance of the Royal, Commonwealth and US navies, Powell and Pressburger combined the boys' own adventure story of the famous 1939 engagement which resulted in the scuttling of the Graf Spee with a highly sympathetic portrayal of the German commander, Captain LangsdorfT. Peter Finch's performance as the gallant LangsdorfT sets The Battle of the River Plate apart from the run-of-the-mill British war film, and was remarked upon by many critics. The decision to portray a far more complex German character was clearly appreciated in West Germany where it was also a great success. This return to profit and public favour must have inspired the follow-up, which is equally interesting. Once again the boys' own adventure element detailing the kidnap of the German military governor of Crete played alongside a more sophisticated storyline, for, as in so many of their films, Powell and Pressburger revealed an interest in landscape and cultures. Crete becomes a magical mountain, which is a secret known only to its inhabitants. This element was strongly underlined by Mikis Theodorakis's powerful score based on traditional Cretan folk songs and tunes. However, these two successes marked the end of the Archers; their joint creativity finally and utterly sapped, they parted. Although both men pursued independent careers, on the whole their forays were desultory and disappointing. Powell's most celebrated independent production, Peeping Tom (i960), is now regarded as a cult classic thanks to its undoubtedly chilling exploration of a psychologically disturbed photographer who kills his models. Seemingly a million miles from The Red Shoes, Mark Lewis's obsessive, compulsive behaviour carries with it hints of Lermontov. The influence of The Red Shoes then played a crucial role in Powell's otherwise very weak film La Luna de Miel (1959). The film follows a newlywed couple, Kit and Anna, on their honeymoon around Spain. Kit offers a stranded motorist a lift and they find out that he is in fact a famous dancer. During conversation Antonio discovers that Anna used to be a dancer and offers her a role in his company, but she declines. The film then slowly becomes a parody of The Red Shoes for Antonio haunts them at every turn and continually attempts to woo Anna back to a life of dance. Sorely tempted, this places a

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great strain on Anna's relationship with her husband. Increasingly possessed by the idea of returning to ballet, she dreams of dancing with Antonio, and 'dance-walks' to the hotel roof where her husband rescues her at the last moment. Seemingly free from Antonio's spell the couple leave Madrid, but Antonio vows to continue his search until he wins possession of her. Antonio therefore has overtones of Lermontov, and the collector of souls in the 'Giuletta' sequence from Hoffmann (as well as the Captain of the Flying D u t c h m a n ) . This otherwise exceptionally contrived and rather hammy film is redeemed by the splendid nightmare ballet scene. Powell used El Amor Brujo (Love the Magician) by Manuel de Falla. An intensely passionate and erotic ballet, El Amor Brujo tells of a gypsy girl who fights to be free from the jealous ghost of her former lover. T h e ballet therefore matched the themes of the film perfectly; in fact, the film seems to be no more than a frame, rather feebly constructed, to hold the ballet. In his autobiography Powell states simply: 'I should never have taken it on. Enough said.' 34 T h e legacy of The Red Shoes is truly phenomenal. It has directly inspired scenes in a host of films, and its atmosphere and passions can be detected in numerous others, many a long way in theme and plot from music, dance and art. Without making an exhaustive list, it is worth noting a few examples from across the decades, starting with the most recent. Conrad Hall, veteran cameraman on Sam Mendes's highly praised American Beauty (1999), seemed to take more than a little inspiration from The Red Shoes. It is seen in the stress on red, the red petals falling like the celluloid panes in the Red Shoes ballet on to the girl's naked body, and most potently in the plastic bag that appears to dance ballet-like on the wind; all bear the marks of homage. Martin Scorsese's debt to Powell and Pressburger is well known and many of his films pay tribute to, and are inspired by, their output. T h e specific impact of The Red Shoes can be seen most clearly in Kundun (1999). Although a film about Tibet and the repression of its people and their faith, Kundun's opulent look and leaps from the real, external world to psychological and imagined interior ones, the fantastic landscapes and the patterns they have imposed on the culture, has a distinct similarity with the blurred

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Powell.

lines smudged so beautifully across both Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes. Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1996) also shares the hallmarks of The Red Shoes: it has a fantastic, hyper-real world and, naturally enough, an equal obsession with the colour red. Ford Coppola's interpretation of the Dracula story was part tribute to Murnau's Nosferatu (1924) and part reworking of The Red Shoes. He luxuriated in the construction of a chimerical, gothic fairytale vision, just as Powell and Pressburger did in the Red Shoes ballet sequence. Ford Coppola did not so much capture Bram Stoker's Dracula as one that Hans Christian Andersen might have written that was subsequently turned into a ballet by Lermontov. Turning to films about music, ballet, art and the mind of the artist, the shadow of The Red Shoes becomes even more pronounced. Powell and Pressburger set the benchmark for films about art and artists. All other films on these subjects have had to deal with this standard, and can be measured against it. Three years before The Red Shoes was released came a British film with ostensibly similar themes, The Seventh Veil (194 j). Like The Red Shoes, it concentrates on the symbiotic relationship between a tortured artist (Ann Todd)

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desperate to realise her ambitions and a Svengali-like psychiatrist. James Mason played the manipulative psychiatrist-cum-impresario with his usual aplomb, alternating between charming and chillingly cold personas. A rattling good melodrama, and a great box-office success in both Britain and the USA, The Seventh Veil cannot be placed in the same bracket as The Red Shoes as it lacks both its horizons and ambitions as a piece of cinema. Doubtless partly inspired by the success of both The Red Shoes and The Seventh Veil, Noel Langley was inspired to remake Svengali (1954). Lacking the power of the original 1931 version, and nowhere near the fireworks of The Red Shoes, this tale of unrequited love between creator and creation seems miserably flaccid by comparison. Similarly, The Red Shoes and what might be labelled its two most immediate younger siblings in the Powell and Pressburger family, The Tales of Hoffmann and Oh, Rosalinda!/, appeared to pave the way for a further version of The Phantom of the Opera (1962). However, rather than explore the relationship between art and those who can create it, this Hammer production went for the easier option of horror and shock. Other films with an obviously stronger interest in the relationship between an artist, h i s / h e r patrons and environment have also failed to capture the same excitement and drama. In the 1950s and 1960s, Hollywood appeared to want to mix the profitable 'high b r o w ' cinema of the art house, characterised most strongly by The Red Shoes, with epic values in order to hit all markets. T h e two most significant examples of this unhappy combination were Lust for Life (1956) and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). Instead of musicians, dancers and singers, these two films followed the lives of two great painters, Vincent Van Gogh and Michelangelo respectively. Both films failed due to their excessive reverence for their subjects and their desperate desire to create a seemingly British form of historical documentary accuracy. T h e flair and creativity of The Red Shoes stands out all the more strongly against these tales of real artists and real scenarios. At the other extreme stand the extraordinarily flamboyant, but dreadfully ill-disciplined, films of Ken Russell. Starting with modest, but enchanting films for the BBC such as Elgar (1963) and Delius, A Song of Summer (1969), he became increasingly over-indulgent in a string of large-scale biopics including The Music Lovers (1972), a

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weird and only occasionally wonderful exploration of Tchaikovsky's life, and Mahler (1975). 35 T h e two films that capture the spirit of The Red Shoes and Powell and Pressburger's understanding of a composed film most successfully were those closest to it in terms of intention: Vincente Minnelli's An American in Paris (1951) and Stanley D o n e n and Gene Kelly's Singin in the Rain (1952) including Gene Kelly's centrepiece dance sequences. Like The Red Shoes, both were aimed squarely at the mass market, but with higher ambitions than the standard Hollywood product. Kelly, and Arthur Freed's unit at MGM, already responsible for such classic musicals as On the Town (1949), were the vital links between both movies, and Kelly was convinced that singing, although an important part of the films, should be subordinated to the dancing. He believed that a hybrid could be created between classical ballet and popular dance, and was determined to express his ideas. Peter Wollen, in his study of Singin in the Rain, identified the rise of ballet in the mainstream Broadway musical as the background to this development, and in the process revealed that the success of The Red Shoes was unwittingly foretold and prefigured by it.36 Starting in 1936 with On Your Toes, a succession of Rodgers and Hart musicals had used ballets making a most spectacular impact in Oklahoma! in 1943, the success of which inspired twelve out of the next twenty-one Broadway musicals to include ballet sequences. Over the next three and a half years forty-six musicals included ballet and twenty-one dream ballet scenes. At the same time ballet was increasingly connected with psychoanalysis, again providing an uncanny similarity with The Red Shoes. Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin's musical, Lady in the Dark (1941), was actually set on a psychiatrist's couch. Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) and Hecht's Spectre of the Rose (1946) then took the trend still further, and in 1945 Fred Astaire danced a ballet in Minnelli's Yolanda and the Thief. A commercial failure, Yolanda and the Thief appeared to destroy the charms, and viability, of further ballet films. However, Kelly was wedded to the concept and created a ballet for On the Town against the advice of Arthur Freed. Requiring still further justification for his plans, it was the success of The Red Shoes that gave Kelly his chance to experiment fully. MGM was determined to emulate The Red Shoes,

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88

and An American in Paris was commissioned 'as a direct challenge to the British film, an attempt to outdo it both commercially and artistically'. 37 Using The Red Shoes as his direct inspiration, Kelly planned a seventeen-minute ballet for the film. Only the success of The Red Shoes could have persuaded Louis B. Mayer to countenance such a decision. Unlike The Red Shoes, however, the crowning ballet of An American in Paris came at the end of the film, the 'conventional' moment. Perhaps emboldened by the success of An American in Paris and its Oscar for best film, Kelly took the decision to insert three ballet sequences into Singin' in the Rain, and then emulated The Red Shoes still further by breaking the need to engineer conventional narrative paths to them, for this time they were staggered throughout the film. Kelly capitalised on the success and the impact of The Red Shoes brilliantly and in doing so paid a massive tribute to the achievement of the Archers. Few British films have had such a direct and deep impact on Hollywood. The Red Shoes is a phenomenon. It has spawned thousands of budding ballerinas, numerous video releases and even a Broadway musical version, which was not a success and closed within a week of opening in 1993 — the original can't be bettered. 38 The Red Shoes is undoubtedly a high point not just in British cinema, but in world cinema too. As has been shown, claims that The Red Shoes was not liked on its original release are only partially true. Certain critics and film-makers believed that Powell and Pressburger were somehow flying against the convention of British cinema. According to these commentators, the national trope of British cinema was drama distilled from realism. It was felt that this crucial element had powered on the success of British cinema during the Second World War, and was seen most potently in the drama documentaries produced during the conflict. Subsequently it informed the post-war cinema and can be seen in films like The Cruel Sea (1953), which set out to record the drudgery of the Battle of the Atlantic with painstaking accuracy and skill, through to the social issues films such as The Blue Lamp (1949) and Oliver Twist (1948). Great films though these are, many at the time did recognise a wider vision of greatness. Powell and Pressburger set new standards for British cinema with their films, and The Red Shoes was the culmination of their partnership. Their

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89

wartime efforts were of a high quality and revealed great originality, but the path to The Red Shoes really started in 1945 with A Matter of Life and Death and then continued with Black Narcissus. In this trio of films their amazing partnership reached its zenith. The films that came after The Red Shoes never quite touched its degree of artistic invention and originality: The Tales of Hoffmann, the most obvious product of The Red Shoes, is actually a string of brilliant scenes, tableaux and montage rather than a whole in itself. The Red Shoes reveals fully the capacity of cinema to dazzle our senses, and has become a significant reference point for many film-makers; its influence and legacy have inspired a myriad of scenes in a host of subsequent productions. The Red Shoes leads its viewers on a magical mystery tour of colour, dance, music, love, obsession and passion, both intellectual and physical, and to me that's what cinema is all about!

Notes

1 . THE C O N T E X T i

Cardiff, The Magic Hour, p. 95.

2 Ibid., p. 97. 3 Macdonald, Emeric Pressburger, p. 292. 4

Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace, pp. 319—20.

5 For further details see Sedgwick, 'Cinema-going Preferences in Britain in the 1930s', pp. 1-36. 6

The first government information film of the war, Do It Now, released in early September 1939, includes advice about the blackout. It shows lights being extinguished on London buildings, one of which is the vast floodlit sign for The Spy in Black on the Odeon, Leicester Square.

7

Quoted in Aldgate and Richards, Britain Can Take It!, pp. 26—7.

8

See Harper, Picturing the Past.

9

Macdonald, Emeric Pressburger, p. 188.

10 For a full discussion of this film see Chapman, 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) Reconsidered', pp. 19—54. 11 The film was not released in the USA until 1949 in a severely cut version but including scenes removed from the British release. 12 Macdonald, Emeric Pressburger, p. 249. Much of the filming was carried out on Jura and Mull, although 'Kiloran' is actually Colonsay, the tiny island between Jura and Mull. Powell, doubtless using his intimate knowledge of the area, used the name of a village on Colonsay as the name for the whole island, the map of Colonsay/Kiloran is seen on Catriona's wall, and various locals refer to genuine Colonsay locations such as the wonderfully named Pigs' Delight, Riasg Buidhe and Balnahard. Having visited Colonsay in the summer of 2003, I was struck by how closely Powell and Pressburger caught the spirit of the place and how little it has changed since 1945! 13 Macdonald, Emeric Pressburger, p. 294. 14 Howard, Michael Powell, p. 55. 15 As Kevin Macdonald has noted, an indirect off-shoot of this form was Disney's Fantasia. 16 Kevin Macdonald has gone one stage further stating that 'the film is not realistic, it is surrealistic {Emeric Pressburger, p. 266).

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17 Cardiff, Magic Hour, pp. 89—90; Powell, A Life in the Movies, p. 624. 18 Gibbon, The Red Shoes Ballet, p. 58. 19 Ibid., p. 52. Perhaps the wondrous birdcage set is the closest they came to this vision in Black Narcissus. 20 Described as 'an apocalyptic ballet drama' (Macdonald, Emeric Pressburger, p. 280). 21

Ibid., p p . 281—2.

22 Gibbon, The Red Shoes Ballet, p. 56. 23 Bayston, 'The Red Shoes', pp. 1,115—16. 24 This short sequence had a deep impact on Martin Scorsese who recalled it fondly in his introduction to Cardiff's autobiography, Magic Hour, p. xi. 25

Ibid.

26 For more details see ibid., pp. 73—4. 27 Perhaps, significantly, Cardiff does not refer to this film in the main text of his autobiography. 28 Macdonald, Emeric Pressburger, p. 282. 29 Quoted in ibid., p. 286. 30 Powell claimed that he was perfectly happy with his performance and in fact encouraged this natural tendency to excess {A Life in the Movies, p. 395). 31 Sorley Walker, Robert Helpmann, p. 71. 32 Powell, A Life in the Movies, p. 644. 33 Powell completely reshaped this incident in his autobiography (ibid., pp. 6 4 1 - 2 ) .

2 . NARRATIVE 1

See Sarah Street, Black Narcissus (London: I.B.Tauris, forthcoming 2005).

2

Powell, A Life in Movies, p. 638.

3 Fry, Moab is My Washpot, pp. 127—8. 4

As Gibbon noted, Olivier pulled off a similar trick in Henry V, bouncing the viewer between the 'reality' of the fields of France and the confines of the Globe. Olivier himself believed that this technique of balancing the real with the fantastical made the 'fantastic' language of Shakespeare understandable and acceptable to cinema audiences {The Red Shoes, p. 26).

5 Although neither Powell or Pressburger appears to have acknowledged it, Walbrook's Lermontov does have a little in common with John Barrymore's interpretation of Svengali in the 1931 Hollywood classic. 6

Rude, arrogant, creative, manipulative, ruthless: in this sense Lermontov also bears a certain resemblance to Powell. David Thomson has written: 'Lermontov — so hot, so cold — is a portrait of Powell himself (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, p. 694).

NOTES

93

7

Fry, Moab is My Washpot, p. 66.

8

Alastair Macaulay has suggested that Lermontov's obsession with Vicky is a heterosexual reworking of the relationship between Diaghilev and Nijinsky. See Financial Times, 12 September 1998.

9

This scene was very hard to shoot. In order to keep Shearer in shot, the staircase had to be mounted on a turntable, which rotated in exact synchronisation with her movements. In order to get the length of shot Powell wanted, the same piece of film was used twice and very carefully edited together by Reggie Mills.

10 Powell, A Life in Movies, p. 640.

3. RECEPTION A N D

LEGACY

1 See Howard, Michael Powell, p. 64. 2

The Times, 22 July 1948; Daily Graphic, 23 July 1948.

3

Sunday Chronicle, 25 July 1948.

4 Evening Standard, 23 July 1948. 5 Quoted in Cardiff, Magic Hour, p. 98. 6

Sight and Sound, 17 (62), Autumn 1948, p. 148.

7 Monthly Film Bulletin, August 1948. 8

Quoted in Macdonald, Emeric Pressburger, p. 296.

9

Films in Review, August 1948.

10 Sorley Walker, Robert Helpmann, p. 71. 11 Observer, 25 July 1948. 12 Sunday Times, 25 July 1948. 13 Daily Mirror, 21 July 1948; Evening News, 22 July 1948. 14 Daily Mail, 23 July 1948. 15 Quoted in Cardiff, Magic Hour, p. 99. 16 Quoted in Macdonald, Emeric Pressburger, p. 297. 17 Gibbon, The Red Shoes, p. 13. 18 Ibid., p. 25. 19

Variety, 172 (8), 27 October 1948.

20 McNab, J. Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry, pp. 163—4. 21 Schatz, Boom and Bust, p. 295. 22 New York. Times, 23 October 1948. 23 Howard, Michael Powell, p. 64; Schatz, Boom and Bust, p. 300; Macdonald, Emeric Pressburger, p. 297; Powell, Million Dollar Movie, p. 393. 24 Cardiff, Magic Hour, p. 100. 25 Ibid.

94

THE RED SHOES 26

Ibid.

27

Q u o t e d in H o w a r d , Michael

28

Q u o t e d in M a c d o n a l d , Emeric Presshurger,

29

Ibid., p. 321.

30

Ibid., p. 324.

31

Q u o t e d in ibid., p. 327.

Powell, p. 69. p. 320.

32

Q u o t e d in H o w a r d , Michael

33

T h e A r c h e r s h a d clearly b e e n impressed b y his w o r k on The Red Shoes, and so M o n k G i b b o n was again c o m m i s s i o n e d to w r i t e a b o o k a b o u t the film: The Tales of Hoffmann ( L o n d o n : Saturn Press, 1951).

34

Powell, Million

35

O n e director has m a n a g e d to h a r n e s s cinematic creativity w i t h the stories of real artists: T o n y Palmer. His fine character studies of c o m p o s e r s including W a g n e r , H a n d e l , Britten, Stravinsky and Berlioz all share s o m e t h i n g in c o m m o n w i t h The Red Shoes, b u t p e r h a p s the c o n n e c t i o n is closest of all in the b l a c k - a n d - w h i t e c h i a r o s c u r o of Testimony (1987), his film about Shostakovich. C e n t r e d o n the relationship b e t w e e n Stalin, the evil p u p p e t m a s t e r of the U S S R o n the o n e h a n d , and Shostakovich, the artist with ambition w h o is b o t h appalled and mesmerised b y the dictator, Testimony has echoes of the Lermontov—Page relationship.

36

Wollen, Singin'

37

Ibid., p. 4 0 .

38

Powell, Million Dollar Movie, p. 313. T h e c u r r e n t D V D special edition is beautiful in its digitally remastered clarity and contains a n u m b e r of interesting extras (catalogue n u m b e r : 3711501193).

Dollar Movie,

Powell, pp. 72—3.

p. 382.

in the Rain, pp. 35—40.

Sources

Aldgate, Anthony, and Jeffrey Richards, Britain Can Take ItI The British Cinema in the Second World War (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986). Bayston, Michael, 'The Red Shoes', Dancing Times, September 1998, pp. 1,115— 16.

Cardiff, Jack, The Magic Hour (London: Faber and Faber, 1996). Chapman, James, 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) Reconsidered', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 17 (2), June 1997, pp. 19—54. Christie, Ian, Arrows of Desire. The Films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (London: Waterstone, 1985). Ede, Laurie, 'The Role of Art Directors in British Films, 1939—1951', Unpublished PhD, University of Portsmouth, 1999. Fry, Stephen, Moab is My Washpot. An Autobiography (London: Hutchinson, J 997)Gibbon, Monk, The Red Shoes Ballet (London: Saturn Press, 1948). — The Tales of Hoffmann (London: Saturn Press, 1951)Harper, Sue, Picturing the Past: The Rise and Fall of British Costume Drama (London: BFI, 1994). Howard, James, Michael Powell (London: Batsford, 1996). Macaulay, Alastair, * The Red Shoes Forty Years On', Financial Times, 12 September 1998. Macdonald, Kevin, Emeric Pressburger. The Life and Death of a Screenwriter (London: Faber and Faber, 1994). McNab, Geoffrey,/. Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry (London: Routledge, x 993)Powell, Michael, A Life in the Movies: An Autobiography (London: Heinemann, 1986). — Million Dollar Movie (New York: Random House, 1995). Richards, Jeffrey, The Age of the Dream Palace. Cinema and Society in Britain 1930—1939 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984). Schatz, Thomas, Boom and Bust. American Cinema in the 1940s (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1997). Sedgwick, John, 'Cinema-going Preferences in Britain in the 1930s', in Jeffrey Richards (ed.), The Unknown 1930s. An Alternative History of the British Cinema, 1929—1930 (London: I.B.Tauris, 1998), pp. 1—36.

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Sorley Walker, Katherine, Robert Helpmann (London: Rockliff, 1957). Thomson, David, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (London: Little, Brown, 2002).

Wollen, Peter, Singin' in the Rain (London: BFI, 1992).

CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS Daily Graphic, 23 July 1948 Daily Mail, 23 July 1948 Daily Mirror, 21 July 1948 Evening News, 22 July 1948 Evening Standard, 23 July 1948 Films in Review, August 1948 Monthly Film Bulletin, August 1948 Observer, 25 July 1948 Sight and Sound, 17 (62), Autumn 1948 Sunday Chronicle, 25 July 1948 Sunday Times, 25 July 1948 The Times, 22 July 1948 Variety, 172 (8), 27 October 1948