Let's Be the Pressburger-Powell "The Red Shoes"

Before anyone else gets a chance, I'm the astonishing shade of teal of the gown worn by Victoria Page as she goes to that magical villa on the Riviera with a Chicken of the Sea tiara on her head made of pearls and emeralds matching me.

I set off her red hair and alabaster skin to perfection.

And I can't be replicated.

I’m the little crown she wears to a business meeting

I'm the guy learning today that there's something called "The Red Shoes" by Pressburger-Powell.

I'm Anton Walbrook's memorably bizarre herky-jerky way of speaking when he comes on at the end to explain the "Red Shoes" ballet will be performed with just a spotlight where the dead Victoria Page would have been had she been alive to dance the role.

I'm the music students climbing at the doors so they can hear the new modernist ballet piece.

I'm the strange pieces no longer in the ballet repertoire performed regularly on tour by the Ballets Lermontov.

I'm Marius Goring's hideously unflattering sweater, worn with an ascot to make me look even more elderly.

I'm Anton Wolbrook's excruciatingly authentic sounding French.

I'm the white smoke from the steam engine train passing below the balcony Vicky is leaning on, doing my sombre foreshadowing bit.

I'm the ghoulish music playing as the heartbroken Vicki is helped toward the stage by her dresser before turning and fleeing toward the open door and . . . that balcony.

I'm the massively heavy old-fashioned stage makeup, especially around the eyes, that Vicki wears in performance.

I am the audience in the theatre who thinks about licorice when Lermentov talks about:

"Da Red Chews...."

I am the suitcase Julian drops as he rushes back toward the balcony in time to see his beautiful young wife fling herself off it.

I'm the red shoes Victoria puts on at the end to start her performance, despite the red shoes being something that she is supposed to obtain ON STAGE DURING THE BALLET.

R12 - Please!

"Ze Red zhoos"

R14 - Actually, at first they do appear on her feet onstage thanks to the magic of photography.

Yez R15....you are correct.... ."ZE red chews....."

I am Anton Walbrook's young man waiting in his dressing room to fuck between scenes.

Anton is so fucking hot as Lermontov.

I am Technicolor and this movie is working me to death!

I'm the cast of Pavlova's foot en pointe that Lermontov moodily caresses in his grand suite wearing a silk lounging robe.

He may have been heartless but no one can say Lermontov didn't have taste.

R18 Agreed. And he totally steals the movie. I’ve always thought of him as like a proto-Addison Dewitt.

[quote]I’ve always thought of him as like a proto-Addison Dewitt.

He was a lightly fictionalized version of Serge Diaghilev, a great Russian patron of arts, founder of Ballets Russes, lover of Nijinsky.and lover and mentor of Léonide Massine, who is in the film. Ballet Lermontov is clearly based on Ballets Russes. Massine was an adorable twink as a youth but later went on to have four wives and four children.

Despite his fictionalized love life in the film, Diaghilev was a big old queen:

The young Massine, drawn by Léon Bakst.

Poster upthread is correct: the film was transparently a roman a clef of the Ballet Russes, Diaghilev, and his relationship with Nijinsky.

In the film, Victoria Page, the ballerina, is substituted for the premier danseuse, Nijinsky, to give Lermontov's some hetero cover for his obsession with his protogee.

I also agree that Lermontov walked off with the film. Wolbrook (who came from ten generations of actors, except for his father, who was a circus clown) was a fantastic actor and his performance in The Red Shoes is so nuanced it hurts. The others are all part of the fairy tale, Lermontov alone comes across as real, but without ever causing the fairy tale aspect of the film to fracture.

Wolbrook was born in Austria, and his mother was Jewish - he was classified as "mixed race" by the fascists; between his Jewish heritage and well known homosexuality, Wolbrook got to England in 1936 and stayed.

I'm Lermontov's manservant, expertly yet unobtrusively serving the Great Man breakfast, quickly pouring coffee (which Lermontov sips through a lump of sugar as he speaks to the distraught young Craster about his stolen score), removing some dishes, replaces others . . . you can't get help like me these days . . .

Sometimes I think Lermontov is in love with Julian. Especially in the last scene when Vicky says to him: "You're jealous of me."

And he replies: "Yes, in ways that you can't even imagine......"

Ratov the designer is played by the same actor who played the kidnapped diplomat in Foreign Correspondent......and the guy who played the original conductor is blind....you can tell if you watch him closely.

I'm the fantastic score for the "Red Shoes" ballet, which ought to be in the classical repertoire!

Seriously, it's fantastic music, particularly the Dance of the Red Shoes.

I'm the straightwashing!

Because as R22 points out, the story was based on a relationship between two men, and the woman who came between them. So they changed the sex of the young dancer and the interfering spouse, because nobody could make same-sex romance films in those days.

I must correct my French - "premier danseuse" should be "premier danseur" (the male equivalent of "ballerina"). "Danseuse" is the feminine case . . .

R24

I'm Ludmilla Tcherina, who plays the older ballerina who no longer inspires Lermontov, especially after I decides to get married.

In truth, I should have been dismissed for eating eclairs and caviare for supper: even in the 1940s, no ballet master would have allowed me onstage with those thighs.

I was a far better painter than dancer, ma ché·ries!

^*ma chéries! (I don't know where that hyphen came from.)

We're Vicky's demented facial expressions, which grow more cuckoo the farther she goes around the bend.

I'm the insane stage makeup, seen up close!

I'm Marius Goring, and I'm so miscast as the romantic leading man as to be laughable.

I'm the intoxicatingly weird/fey Robert Helpmann as Boleslawsky.

I'm the stage mothers, sitting aside furiously knitting tights for their daughters who are hoping to get into the Ballet Lermontov (only one does besides Miss Page).

R35 - That photo is wrongly captioned: that isn't Helpmann, it's Massine. I remember the scene quite well. Helpmann didn't joke about like that with Page.

Margot Fonteyn, in her autiobiography, commented that sharing a stage with the likes of Robert Helpmann was to learn in a very hard school. She was much younger than he when she began with the company, which was then run by Ninette de Valois and was called the Sadlers Wells ballet.

Thank you, R37. I had a hell of a time trying to find a photo of Helpmann that wasn't the one already posted, and I kept getting him confused with Massine. It's been years since I've seen the film.

I'm the red silk thread picking out the lapel button hole on Anton Walbrook's dark suit jacket.

I'm the most stylish thing in the history of movies!

I'm the eviscerated Lady Neston after Lermontov politely declines to watch her niece (Victoria Page) dance, murmuring that "one doesn't like to see one's religion practiced in an atmosphere such as this" with a beautifully underplayed gesture of contempt at my cocktail party going on around us.

I’m the excruciatingly boring horse carriage scene, where Vicky and Julian’s lack of chemistry caused even the driver to fall asleep.

Seriously, no wonder she chose the shoes in the end.

I'm the broken mirror.

I’m the straight guys saying, “what, the right shoes?”

Oh, yeah, let's get one thing straight. See, I never heard about "The Red Shoes," I never saw "The Red Shoes," I didn't give a fuck about "The Red Shoes.