The most famous line in The Red Shoes is probably an early exchange between Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) and Victoria Page (Moira Shearer). The director of a prestigious ballet company asks the aspiring ballerina why she wants to dance. Her reply: “Why do you want to live?”
The answer impresses Lermontov enough to earn her a small part in the company, but it also reveals the two most important themes of the film—the importance of vocation and the danger of allowing that vocation to become an idol.
Probably one of the least commented on scenes is when aspiring composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring) plays through his rewrite of the titular ballet for Lermontov. At one point, he replaces a pedestrian hymn with a Lutheran chorale. The chorale is Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (Now come, Savior of the Heathen). It’s a fascinating choice of music to pair with a setting of a Hans Christen Andersen fairy tale, but one that emphasizes the theme of idolizing art and the necessity of salvation from that.
For Vicky and Julian that hope of salvation comes in the form of their love, to the consternation of Lermontov. However, it may not be enough to save them from the slavish devotion to their art that Lermontov expects and requires of everyone in his company. An early dismissal of his prima ballerina because she got married causes the fired dancer to exclaim, “He has no heart.” Ballet for Lermontov is a jealous and merciless god that will allow for no other loves.
Lermontov embodies the red shoes of the titular fairy tale and ballet. As he relates the story of the ballet to Craster, he says with palpable exhilaration, “At the end of the evening she gets tired and wants to go home, but the red shoes are not tired. In fact, the red shoes are never tired…Time rushes by. Love rushes by. Life rushes by. But the red shoes dance on.” When Craster inquires how the story ends, Lermontov nonchalantly says, “In the end, she dies,” as if that’s the natural outcome once someone can no longer create their art.
Obviously, Vicky is the young girl and how her story ends is a fait accompli, foreshadowed through the settings of two of her major interactions with Lermontov and the place where she first meets Julian. Both men represent two vocations, and both of them make one incompatible with the other. That is the tragedy of the film, and it is from that which all the characters need salvation.
In a scene towards the end, there is an acknowledgment of that need for salvation, but it is too little too late. The conflict between the two vocations can be seen in Vicky and Julian’s bedroom. Not only does the allegedly blissfully married couple sleep in separate beds, but the lighting creates a dark chasm between them, showing that need for reconciliation. The scene turns into both of them pursuing their art, making it even clearer that their two loves are too envious to allow a competing force.
Importantly, the film allows the viewer to be swept up in the grandeur of the art and romance, wishing for both to work out with a happy ending, without acknowledging how toxic the idolization of a vocation is. Brian Easdale’s gorgeous score, Robert Helpmann’s stunning choreography, and Moira Shearer’s flawless execution make the ballet of The Red Shoes come alive as it needs to. It indicts the viewer’s own desires, making them culpable for any time they’ve idolized a love of theirs excessively.
The more I think about it, the more perfect that chorale choice is. It matches the perfection of the dancing, the acting, the scoring, the directing, the costume design, and it does so in a way that reminds the viewer that any art or the need to create art cannot be the only reason to live. Art for art’s sake is not necessarily a bad thing, but as beautiful and enriching as great art is, it becomes even greater when it exists for something beyond itself as well. That’s a realization that all the characters eventually have, and it’s one that the final scene hauntingly and tragically depicts.
— Evan Cogswell (2020), blogger at Catholic Cinephile
- Directed by: Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger
- Produced by: Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger George R. Busby
- Written by: Hans Christian Andersen Keith Winter Michael Powell Emeric Pressburger
- Music by: Brian Easdale
- Cinematography by: Jack Cardiff
- Editing by: Reginald Mills
- Release Date: 1948
- Running Time: 135
- Language: English, French, Russian
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