The Red Shoes

To be a woman and to have to choose between ambition and love - to me this is not only a wonderful idea for a film but it the current dilemma for women.  Unless you are rich it is almost impossible to pursue an ambitious career and have a family/husband.

Michael Powell’s and Emeric Pressburger’s Oscar® winning The Red Shoes follows Moira Shearer’s Victoria Page, a young woman who wants nothing more to be the best ballerina she can be.  And for her that means dancing with Boris Lermontov’s (the always amazing Anton Walbrook) dancers.  When she gets the chance to dance with Lermontov she thinks that she is set and he thinks that he can turn her into the best ballerina ever.  All is well until Victoria falls in love with Julian Craster, the composer of the ballet.  Victoria thinks she can have both but Lermontov and Craster think that she can only have one or the other:

Boris Lermontov: You cannot have it both ways. A dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love can never be a great dancer. Never.

It is a story, that to me, really gets at the heart of what it means to be a woman and the expectations men have placed on all of us for years.  It would seem in many ways that things have gotten better, but with the increased opportunities women have comes an increase in choosing between this and that.  We are brought up being told we can have it all but all too often that turns out to be anything but true.

Even if you don’t necessarily agree with me, The Red Shoes does a great job of furthering the discussion, and it is a discussion worth having.

Also, the film is remarkably beautiful and you won’t see a more amazing cinemtaic representation of the ballet anywhere else.  As the New York Times review from 1948 said:

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 the 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.

Watch this film to see how it pushed the envelope and then takepart with the National Organization for Women.

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