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Bookmark this pageThe Red Shoes (1948)
Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
In outline, a rather over-determined melodrama set in the ballet world: impresario (Walbrook) 'discovers' dancer (Shearer), and makes her a slave to her art, until young composer (Goring) turns up to offer her a lifeline back to reality. But in texture, it's like nothing the British cinema had ever seen: a rhapsody of colour expressionism, reaching delirious heights in the ballet scenes, but never becoming too brash and smothering its own nuances. And if the plot threatens to anchor the spectacle in a more mundane register, it's worth bearing in mind the inhibition on which it rests: the central impresario/dancer relationship was modelled directly on Diaghilev and Nijinsky, and its dynamic remains 'secretly' gay.Author: TR
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Cast & crew
Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Producer: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Cast: Anton Walbrook, Moira Shearer, Marius Goring, Leonid Massine, Albert Basserman, Robert Helpmann, Esmond Knight, Ludmilla Tcherina, Frederick Ashton full cast
Genre(s): Musicals
Duration: 133 mins
US Release: Nov 6 2009
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