Re: Red Shoes

[kandb@ix.netcom.com (Ben Miller & Kris Lyons)]

Richard Evans wrote: 

>
>Did anybody see The Red Shoes - the movie recently ? Sunday night I think,
>on BBC2 in the early evening. I've videod it for future viewing but the big
>question is do I
>1) rush home and watch
>2) watch it at my leisure
>3) not bother
>
>Any comments on the film would be welcome.
>
>HNY2U
>
>richard
>
>

I've seen the Red Shoes a couple times and bits and pieces of it more often. I 
think it is a wonderful, beautiful movie.  Here is waht influmential American 
Film critic Pauline Kael had to say about it:


The most "imaginative" and elaborate backstage musical ever filmed, and many 
have called it great. The film contains a 14-minute ballet, also called "The Red 
Shoes," based on a Hans Christian Andersen story about a wicked shoemaker who 
sells an enchanted pair of slippers to a young girl. Delighted at first with the 
slippers in which she dances joyously, she discovers that the slippers will not 
let her stop dancing—and the bewitched, exhausted girl dies. The film's story 
is, of course, the same story, spelled out in more complicated terms, with the 
shoemaker of the ballet (Léonide Massine) replaced by the megalomaniac ballet 
impresario (Anton Walbrook). The exquisite young Moira Shearer is the ballerina; 
the cast includes Marius Goring as the young composer, Robert Helpmann, Albert 
Basserman, Ludmilla Tcherina, and Esmond Knight. Blubbery and self-conscious, 
but it affects some people passionately, and it's undeniably some kind of 
classic. Written, produced, and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric 
Pressburger—master purveyors of high kitsch. Choreography by Helpmann; music by 
Brian Easdale; conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. 

"Copyright (c) 1993, Microsoft Corp." - from their excellent Cinemania CD-ROM.

Happy viewing,

Ben Miller
kandb@ix.netcom.com