The Red Shoes

VANCOUVER PREMIERE of the NEW BEAUTIFUL 35mm RESTORATION!
► “One of the most beloved films of all time” (Ian Christie), Powell and Pressburger’s ravishing, rapturous The Red Shoes is also one of the most beautiful — as this exquisite, eye-popping Technicolor restoration, presented by Martin Scorsese at Cannes last year, magnificently demonstrates. (Scorsese, by the way, cites The Red Shoes as one of the five best films ever made, along with 8 1/2, Citizen Kane, The Leopard, and The Searchers). Moira Shearer, in a remarkable debut, is Victoria Page, an up-and-coming dancer newly taken on by a successful ballet company. Anton Walbrook is Lermontov, the company’s demanding, manipulative impresario (modelled on Serge Diaghilev), whose ruthless your-art-is-your-life approach to dance imperils Victoria’s physical and emotional health. Marius Goring is Julian, the young composer with whom Victoria falls in love. The Red Shoes is loosely based on the fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen; the film’s much-celebrated centrepiece, a stunning 14-minute ballet sequence directly based on the Andersen tale, is one of the great glories of cinema. Jack Cardiff provided the dazzling Technicolor cinematography; the film won 1948 Oscars for Best Art Direction and Best Score, and was a nominee for Best Picture and Best Story. “It’s like nothing the British cinema had ever seen: a rhapsody of colour expressionism, reaching delirious heights in the ballet scenes" (Tony Rayns, Time Out). “Essential viewing . . . A film like few others, made like few others . . . It is likely to seduce yet new generations” (Manohla Dargis, New York Times). Colour, 35mm. 136 mins.