went from one of the best endings I've ever seen to one of the worst - The Red Shoes (1948) Discussion

[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

Who says she lived? She didn't live in it all the times I've seen it.
The French doctor says "Pas d'espoir" ("no hope").
With her dying breath she asks Julian to take off the red shoes and he then collapses in tears over her dead body.

The Ballet Lermontov then put on a performance of The Red Shoes without the prima ballerina.

How many more clues do you need?

Steve

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[–] doowopfan 14 years ago

Corpses can't talk.

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I did sixty in five minutes once...

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[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

People don't always die instantly, even when they jump from a balcony and are then hit by a train

Steve

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[–] doowopfan 14 years ago

eh, I'd like to see someone get hit by a train and live. That person is a real trooper.
Like I said, if it had ended there it would have been one of the greatest endings and death scenes in movie history.
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I did sixty in five minutes once...

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[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

She didn't live, but she didn't die instantly either.
She survived long enough to give a last gasp and to ask Julian to remove the red shoes.

The train wasn't going at full speed. It was coming to a stop anyway as it approached the station.

But what, do you think that it should have just been Jump, Splat, roll credits?
That wouldn't then have given us Lermontov's final speech and wouldn't have shown us how everyone realised what they had driven Vicky to

Steve

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[–] silverkid 14 years ago

The ending was awful! One of the most absurd conclusions to an otherwise great film I've ever seen in my life. When she chose dancing over Julian, it was such a tragedy of classic proportions, Shakespearean-like! And then she turns around and runs towards him in a ridiculous and sappy manner. And then to make things worse, she somehow falls over a ledge, gets hit by a train, survives to utter (last words?) to Julian to take off the Red Shoes.

WOW. What the hell were they thinking? What an awful way to end the movie.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, its been 62 years since this film was made. Its unfair to judge the movie based on its flaws. Do you compare cars from 1948 and 2010? Do you compare telephones from 1948 and 2010? You can't effectively and objectively compare something that was made 60 years ago in this day and age.

http://most-underrated-movies.blogspot.com/

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[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

Now that I think about it, its been 62 years since this film was made. Its unfair to judge the movie based on its flaws. Do you compare cars from 1948 and 2010? Do you compare telephones from 1948 and 2010? You can't effectively and objectively compare something that was made 60 years ago in this day and age.

Why not? I do it all the time. I often look at modern films and say "They're nowhere near as good as films that were made in the 1940s"

You're right though, you shouldn't judge a film by modern standards. But a film like this can stand up to almost anything that has come out of Hollywood in the last decade or so (IMHO).

But wasn't your complaint about the story, particularly the way it ended?
The "Marriage or career" choice isn't so much of a problem for women nowadays as it was in the 1940s. It was quite understandable to audiences at the time, or at least to the female half of the audiences.

Vicky was also acting out the role she played in the ballet. The red shoes drove her to dance, and she couldn't stop dancing even though it drove her to her death.

Did she fall off the balcony? Or did she jump?

Steve

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[–] angelatalk2000 14 years ago

Not only was the work/career issue more pressing for women in the '40's, it has always been a problem for ballerinas, who can't show up for work with a baby bump. Also, movies were more melodramatic years ago.

Even so, Vicky's problem was foreshadowed through the movie, being the dancer in the 'Red Shoes' ballet, in which a women must dance no matter how painful or how it separates her from other parts of her life. Contrast the scene at the hotel after Vicky gets part in the ballet, where she and Julian are leaning over the balcony peacefully watching the train come in and the end of the movie. And in the ballet itself, where Vicky sees Julian, Lermontov and the Cobbler who made the shoes, and is ultimately pulled three ways; Julian, Lermontov and dancing somewhere away from those two bozos.

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[–] photondancer 14 years ago

I agree with Steve, there's no reason to assume she should have died instantly. Firstly since the train was coming into the station it would have been moving quite slowly and secondly, people with crush injuries often survive for hours before dying, let alone ten minutes. The parallel with the ballet requires that she survive long enough to ask for the shoes to be removed, anyway. (I was half expecting that the train would cut off her feet, which is what actually happened in Andersen's story.)

I saw this film for the first time tonight and felt the film, in its small way, was making a bit of a feminist statement. Lermontov was willing to employ married women, very unusual for the time, which pointed up how selfish Julian was for demanding Vicky discard her ambition for no (good) reason.

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[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

Powell & Pressburger films are often quite popular with feminists. They not only assume that women are at least the equal of men, they show the women as strong independent characters.

Think of Frau Tiel / Jill Blacklock in The Spy in Black
Or Mrs.Sorensen in Contraband
Or Edith/Barbara/Johnny in Colonel Blimp
Or Catriona & Joan in I Know Where I'm Going!

These were no frail little creatures waiting for and dependent on any man

Steve

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[–] chael38 14 years ago

of course she died. she asked for the red shoes to be removed and life imitated art.

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[–] Steve Crook 14 years ago

There's no "of course" about it. It's not made explicit that she died either in the ballet or in "real life" (in the film). They're both left deliberately ambiguous

Steve

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[–] GeneticSugarKane 12 years ago

Lermonov tells Krastor that "the girl" in The Red Shoes dies... so of course she dies.

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[–] butaneggbert 11 years ago

Yep. Classic prefiguring. When he relates the story to Crasner, he throws away the fact of her death as practically parenthetical to the tale. Contrast that to his reaction when the (pending) death is real - suddenly something is as, even maybe more, important than the ballet.

Granted that prefiguring, and granted that a 1948 European audience would be very well acquainted with the original Anderson story, it's pretty clear that the character was meant to be dead. But why didn't they show the usual "last breath" scene rather than leave it nebulous?

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[–] laxlon 13 years ago

If they filmed that scene for today's audience she would have jumped off the balcony, been run over by the train, bounced further on down the cliff pounded by boulders on her war to landing in the sea and been eaten by a shark.

Only then would she ask Julian to remove the red shoes.

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[–] Steve Crook 13 years ago

If they filmed that scene for today's audience she would have jumped off the balcony, been run over by the train, bounced further on down the cliff pounded by boulders on her war to landing in the sea and been eaten by a shark.

Only then would she ask Julian to remove the red shoes.

Steve

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[–] princesstinymeat 11 years ago

Average length of time to die from being run over by a train is 17 minutes.

http://lostallhope.com/suicide-methods/jumping-under-train

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[–] jmillerdp 10 years ago

As said in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?": "All the most respectable people have been hit by trains."

So, there you go! 

I. Drink. Your. Milkshake! [slurp!] I DRINK IT UP! - Daniel Plainview - There Will Be Blood

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[–] Egg_MacGuffin 12 years ago

Who says she lived? She didn't live in it all the times I've seen it.
The French doctor says "Pas d'espoir" ("no hope").
With her dying breath she asks Julian to take off the red shoes and he then collapses in tears over her dead body.

The Ballet Lermontov then put on a performance of The Red Shoes without the prima ballerina.

How many more clues do you need? :)

Exactly.

This guy needs to pay attention.

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[–] ciocio-2 14 years ago

You write, "She wanted this dream so badly that when she couldn't get it she throws herself in front of the train."

She wanted the dream and she DID get it. Unfortunately, her husband, Julian (the real Mr. Douchebag--well, all right, one of two Mr. Douchebags) isn't willing to live and let live with her and her career. Why is he so unwilling to live a life in which the two of them can practice their arts, pursue their passions, and love and support each other? I'm forgetting now (been awhile since I watched TRS)--does Lermontov start to treat him like crap because he and Vickie got married? If that's so, or some other legitimate reason for his animosity to Lermontov, then Julian's feelings are understandable, but he appears to have no respect or care at all for his wife's career and feelings. He also has no respect for artistic integrity and professionalism; he should not have run away from the premiere of his opera, and he should not have demanded Vickie leave the performance she was about to begin, so matter what emotions he had about the situation.

I don't think it's clear whether Vickie throws herself down to the rails, or falls by accident. Either way, she is definitely dieing just before she asks Julian to take off the shoes. The doctor says there is no hope for her, and the filmmakers clearly mean this as a death scene. To insist it's something else is just stubborn silliness. Lermontov's speech makes it clear she's not coming back. So be glad; you can safely enjoy this ending.

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[–] fanaticita 14 years ago

I didn't feel that she jumped at all. I felt that the red shoes at that moment became more that just ballet slippers -(the focus of the camera on her running down the stairs to the balcony where the train was)- but became a part of her life as it was in the ballet. She fell over the balcony, and also, I don't believed that she died. The commentary didn't indicate that she died either,although she probably never danced again.

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[–] PillowRock 14 years ago

The commentary didn't specify that she was dieing because they figured that was self-evident.

When the doctor tells the husband "Pas d'espoir" (that's "no hope") and isn't even bothering to dress the bleeding fresh wounds, the person's life expectancy is measured in minutes.

While it could be argued that Lermontov would be more broken about losing the dancer than Vickie dieing, that is *not* true about Grisha. Grisha's reaction speaks more of death than of no-more-dancing injury.

There's also the fact that these Archers movies like their symbolism, their thematic echos, their figurative "rhymes" and repetitions in the narrative. In the ballet "The Red Shoes", that last thing that The Girl does before she dies is have The Boy remove the red shoes from her feet (and in the movie's dialog talking about the ballet they do go out of their way to specifically state that The Girl dies at the end of the ballet, just in case the ballet itself might not be definitive enough for some viewers). In the movie The Red Shoes, the last thing that Vicky does is have Julian remove the red shoes from her feet.

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[–] shani-3 14 years ago

She died at the end; I don't know why people need these things spelled out for them. In the scene where she and Lermantov meet for the first time, he asks her, "Why do you want to dance?", to which she replies, "Why do you want to live?" His answer: "I don't know--because I must?". Vicki doesn't know why she wants to dance, she only knows she must, or she can't "live". Just like the girl in the ballet--the shoes keep her dancing literally until she dies. The reactions of the other dancers in the company is another clue: if Vicki had only been severely injured by the train, I think they would be professional enough to pull it together for the performance; instead they were, for the most part, completely distraught to the point of not being able to dance. Finally, why go through the trouble of having her throw herself spectacularly off a balcony and in front of a coming train if they were not planning on having her die?

Yeah, they're dead, they're--all messed up.

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[–] kaskait 10 years ago

You are wrong about Julian. He did let her live. She was dancing all during the time they were together. VICKY was the one who went into depression because she couldn't dance with Lermontov's company. VICKY was the one who stood in the way of her own dancing.

Vicky is psychologically the age of a young teenager. She is not mature. But neither is Lermontov. The only one in the triangle who was an adult was Julian.

Like Lermontov, Vicky repressed herself for dance. Both of them are like flagellents for Ballet. Which is why when their passion is released (Lermontov for Vicky's talent and beauty/Vicky for the freedom Julian's love gives to her), they fall apart. Neither of them has the experience or maturity to reign in their desires.

Vicky threw herself under that train because she was unable to make an important decision.

1 - Leave her husband and dance with Lermontov's company

2 - Stay with her husband and dance for other companies.

She wants both and can't have both.

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[–] Steve Crook 10 years ago

Another thread on this board is titled "Overwrought melodrama". It isn't. It's a very well wrought melodrama

Steve

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[–] forlorn_rage (166) 2 years ago

Did we watch the same movie? Julian was not adult at all. He was the biggest asshole in the entire movie!

He's so self-centered, entitled and spoiled, he would throw a tantrum and stomp off whenever he didn't get his way. This happened multiple times throughout the movie, beginning from his very first scene.

Even Lermontov who was known to be inflexible and made it clear he didn't want his dancers having romantic entanglements, eventually relented, and let both Irina and Vicky back into the company. And Vicky only came back after parting ways with Lermontov and agreeing to dance for other companies when she didn't have to, purely for her bratty husband's benefit.

Julian, on the other hand, had no regard for anyone but himself. People constantly had to pick up after him and work around his egotistical outbursts. The final straw was at the end when he tossed aside his professional obligations and left his concert. For what? So he can break into another major tantrum, guilt trip Vicky into giving up the greatest opportunity of her career (something which she would never do to him!), emotionally beating her down by accusing her of "destroying" their love because she is not childish and bratty enough to walk away from her professional obligations for their so-called LURVE the way he did, and then walking away from his clearly distraught wife and driving her to her death.

Julian was beyond pathetic. How had *any* friends, much less Vicky's love, is beyond me.

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[–] ElizabethJoestar (946) 2 years ago

"Julian was beyond pathetic. How had *any* friends, much less Vicky's love, is beyond me. "

YES!

If anything, my one complaint about this movie is that Julian is so annoying that it's hard for me to see why Vicky should agonize over him or the career. Pick the career!

But still, what's brilliant about this movie is that all three of this characters are flawed and their egos get in the way of their own happiness. That keeps it from being simply "an overwrought melodrama." It feels true to life. (Unfortunately, people picking selfish partners is also true to life-- I've seen it time and time again myself.)

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[–] Annkat (368) 2 years ago

Julian does have friends. We see him with them. Friends who would go to bat for him because his Professor stole his student score. Lermontov has no friends. Vicky has her aunt and a would be boyfriend that she keeps at arms length.

Julian has ego because he is talented. The same could be said of Lermontov and Vicky.

You are looking at the film through a POV that has nothing to do with this film.

Vicky fell in love with Julian. Her love and passion for him was the same level as her love and passion for ballet. She couldn't choose between them because she was immature.

Julian knew that Lermontov's attraction to Vicky was more than for her dancing. As far as he was concerned, he was in the midst of losing his wife to another man. Which he was. He left the debut of his own first major work in order to save his marriage. There was no guilt tripping.

Vicky was in the wrong here and that was why she flipped out and committed suicide. She couldn't accept that her own behavior lost her a husband that she loved more than anything and a career that she loved just as much.

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[–] forlorn_rage (166) 2 years ago

Read the above posts again, we acknowledge Julian has friends. We said *how* he maintained friends with his awful character was beyond us.

Really? Vicky is in the wrong and immature for choosing to fulfill her obligations like an adult, unlike her immature brat of a husband?

I hope no woman comes to *you* for career or personal advice!

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[–] Annkat (368) 2 years ago

I am a woman. And Julian was nothing but indulgent of both Julian and Vicky. The one time he makes a demand for his wife to stay away from another man who wants to ruin their marriage, Vicky ultimately refuses.

How did she act like an adult?

She was dancing with other companies, the movie makes that quite clear. No one was stopping her from dancing. But she had to dance in the ballet company that had the ballet created on her. She decided to throw away her marriage for vanity. The immature one is Vicky and rather than face it, she threw herself in front of a train.

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[–] forlorn_rage (166) 2 years ago

.... So what if you're a woman? That hardly changes anything.

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[–] Sophitia36 14 years ago

I think all the people here who complain about the ending simply didn't understand it.

It seems obvious to me that she dies, first because of the "Pas d'espoir" of the doctor, and because life mimics art (she dies after the shoes are removed, like her character). In a way, you could even say it's not even that important if she dies or not... but to me she does.

Then, as someone said it is deliberatly ambiguous. She did not choose dancing over Julian, not did she change her mind at the end and choose Julian over dancing. She was unable to choose, it was unbearable to her. The only resolution was death.
Whether her death was a suicide, or an accident, or due to the evil "magic" of the red shoes is left to the viewer's interpretation.
I think it's a brilliant ending.

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[–] doowopfan 14 years ago

yes, she died a bit later. You get hit by a train, it would be on contact right?

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I did sixty in five minutes once...

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[–] PillowRock 14 years ago

It depends on what exactly you mean by "get hit by a train". Since we don't see the actual impact, we don't *exactly* what happened.

If you are directly in front of the train, then it depends on how fast the train is going when it hits you (which, in turn, tends to be a function of how far you are from a station where the train stops). (Assuming, of course, that you get bounced; that you don't go under the wheels and get severed. Clearly, from the condition of her body, she had not gone under the wheels.)

If the train is going "at speed", then it depends on whether you are in front of the train getting plowed down or come off the balcony at time when you hit the side of the train and get re-bounced to the side.

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[–] ElCarnal 13 years ago

It was absolutely compulsory to film this last scene because of the parallel with the ballet; in the end of the ballet the heroin, exhausted, asks in her last breathe for the red shoes to be removed, and then dies. Here it's the same, with the shoes symbolizing her extreme passion for dancing and the fact that she's unable to leave a normal life out of the dance.

However, what didn't work for me was that I thought the suicide wasn't built up enough. In the train scene she seems cheerful, and says she's fine and everything. Then there's just this one drama scene and pouf, she jumps off the balcony.

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[–] Steve Crook 13 years ago

Yes, there's just one drama scene - but it is a helluva scene. With the two loves of her life, Julian and the ballet, represented by Lermontov, pulling her in different directions. Vicky finally decides that she will dance, so Julian effectively tells her the marriage is over. Vicky is so distraught that she can hardly walk and has to be helped by her dresser who is muttering a stream of French as she would to a child in tears.

Then the shoes begin to twitch and as the overture plays, they carry her at speed down the spiral staircase and out onto the terrace overlooking the railway.

Steve

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[–] ParanoiaPoliticianDiva77 13 years ago

Many people have been hit by trains (at full speed too) and lived to tell the tale. Depends which part of them gets hit. But there was only a girl a few years ago in Sydney (where I live) who fell onto the trains at a station and got run over by a train passing through. She lost her leg but she lived.
If Vicky had a stomach ingury or some nasty internal bleeding she woudn't have died on contact but her moments would be limited.

It's never over, all my blood for the sweetness of his laughter

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[–] emilygracey 13 years ago

This is going to be a bit lengthy so I hope you're in for the long haul. I'm bringing out my treasured copy of "The Red Shoes" by Powell and Pressburger. Here are the important key paragraphs from the last chapter so I hope this clears up a few things.

The red shoes ran across the pink icing terrace.

The red shoes jumped onto the parapet - the parapet over the railway cutting.

Julian felt, rather than heard, her desperate cry. People who are very close to each other sometimes know when they are needed by another ecstatic soul.

Even that leap to death was a work of art. Julian saw her throw her arms up against the sky. Her body made a perfect curve against the smoke of the engine. He ran and ran along the platform toward the train and roared with horror.

The train pulled up with crazy, frightened clanking. It was a freight train, unscheduled, not meant to stop at the Monte Carlo station. Julian headed the running searchers, stopping along the tracks, searching...searching...Then he saw a bloodstained bundle of pink tulle and went on his hands and knees and crawled under the railroad car.

[...]

A silent ring of people surrounded Julian, as he knelt by Vicky in the last of the sunlight. Her poor broken body lay on a stretcher. Children, women with shopping bags, station officials, looked dumbly on, as a little fat doctor made her as comfortable as he could. "Pas d'espoir. No 'ope at all," he muttered to Julian, who threw his face up to Heaven and his arms about, as if he were asking God to have pity on a poor puppet with a human heart. The sun beat down on the torn, bloodstained body and the despairing man. A man started to cry with great sobs as Julian stretched himself on the ground beside his beloved as if he were trying to sink with her into her last resting place.

She felt his breath on her face and opened her eyes. She was going. She breathed, "Julian...take off the red shoes..."

It was her last gift to him. He untied the tapes, slid off the red shoes - now, alas, more red than ever before. He kissed her feet. The doctor put his arms around him.

She did die, but I'm not 100% I would consider it a suicide. If you can get your hands on a copy of this book you won't regret it. You get some incredible insight into the characters and their motivations. It pops up on eBay and abebooks.com quite a bit and, with a 280 page length, is a fairly quick read. Hope this helps.

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[–] Steve Crook 13 years ago

But P&P did write that book in 1978 - so they had a long time to consider the reaction to the 1948 film.

It is very good though and gives a lot more background to some scenes like Julian wanting to reclaim his letter to Lermontov and Vicky's return to Monte Carlo.

Steve

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[–] ceebeegee 13 years ago

My version of the DVD has a track with Jeremy Irons reading passages from the novel-fantastic! It really explicates a lot of the movie.

Alos, I think the closeup son the shoes at the end, where it really does seem as though the shoes are pulling her to the balcony, muddy the issue a bit. Certainly this wasn't a cut and dry suicide.

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[–] Steve Crook 13 years ago

My version of the DVD has a track with Jeremy Irons reading passages from the novel-fantastic! It really explicates a lot of the movie.

That's the novelisation by Powell & Pressburger of their film. It was written 30 years after the film so they had time to think about the story and to consider the reaction from various people.

That's the Criterion DVD which must be one of the most extras packed DVDs ever made:
+ New digital transfer supervised by Oscar winning director of photography Jack Cardiff.
+ Audio commentary by film historian Ian Christie, featuring interviews with stars Marius Goring and Moira Shearer, cinematographer Jack Cardiff, composer Brian Easdale and Martin Scorsese.
+ Third audio track with Jeremy Irons reading from Powell and Pressburger's novelisation of The Red Shoes.
+ Martin Scorsese's collection of The Red Shoes memorabilia.
+ A collection of rare publicity of behind-the-scenes production stills.
+ The Red Shoes Sketches, an animated film of Hein Heckroth's painted storyboards. These may be viewed by themselves or in split screen (alternate angle) with the ballet of "The Red Shoes" from the film.
+ The animated film may be viewed with the music from the ballet or with Jeremy Irons reading from the original Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale.
+ Theatrical Trailer.
+ A Powell and Pressburger filmography with film clips and stills.
+ English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing.

Steve

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] Steve Crook 13 years ago

I didn't buy that dancing and marriage were mutually exclusive.

Remember that it was made in 1947/48. Luckily things have changed since then. But ask your mother or grandmother what things were like back in the 1940s. Many women were made to leave their jobs if they got married.

Steve

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] Steve Crook 13 years ago

Lermontov only takes Irina (Ludmilla Tchérina) back when he's desperate for a leading dancer after Vicky leaves and when he hears that Irina is bored with her marriage. (There are more details given in the book the P&P wrote about the story)

Lermontov doesn't make Vicky choose between marriage and dancing but between marriage and dancing in his company. She does dance for other companies and continues to practise every day. But Lermontov forbids Vicky, or anyone else, from dancing "The Red Shoes" again.

At the time (in the film), Lermontov's company is the only major ballet company in the world. Dancing for other companies won't bring Vicky as much satisfaction and won't make her as famous.

It's not so much that Lermontov is a sterile, dictatorial and jealous male, it's that he wants all of his dancers, and the rest of the troupe, to dedicate themselves completely to his productions. 90% or even 99% isn't good enough for him, he demands 100% from everyone. But when people give 100% they make some of the best productions ever seen. That was very much like The Archers

Steve

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] Steve Crook 13 years ago

This is drama, or even melodrama. It's not real life

Steve

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] Steve Crook 13 years ago

Ah well, it's not compulsory to like it.

Those that do like it seem to like it a lot. But not everyone likes it

Steve

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] Cait1994 12 years ago

I always assumed she did die, just not instantaneously...

"Oh, you're so cool Brewster"

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[–] activista 12 years ago

Hell, yeah, that ending sucked! I knew it was probably coming, due to the nature of the story, but still,I was like, "WTF was all that about?" Just saw it and I loved the whole performance of the Ballet of The Red Shoes---at first it was stage bound, then it became like this colorful phantasmagoria of a world unto itself as Vicky drifts/flows from one setting to another while dancing with different people. I can see how that must have been exhausting for Moira Shearer, since she had to do the complete entire ballet. Loved that part, but then I've always loved musicals. It was different and a little more mature and slightly advanced than your typical Hollywood production at the time (it's a European film, so that explains it.) There's also another thread on this board about Shearer's dancing,claiming that she was too stiff in her movements---I don't get that either---I thought her dancing was wonderfully expressive,lively, and fun to watch----especially when she did all those leaps,piroettes, and twirls throughout the sequences.

The ending was some over-the-top ridiculous 1940's-style dramatic s***, though! I mean, come on---all she had to do was say to her husband, "Look,Julian, it's not even about you, it's about ME and MY time to shine again! If you can't handle that, just get the hell on and keep it moving!" Honestly, neither one of those dudes were worth throwing her career AND her life over for! And another thing---women's roles were usually much stronger in the films of that era---the writers could have shown her with a little more backbone in that situation. And also Boris was a good businessman, but that didn't give him the right to be a total and complete arrogant a**hole---I wanted someone to go off on him so bad, I was glad when the French dancer who played the clown (he was also great in the ballet of The Red Shoes) finally told him the hell off for once. I also liked the rehearsal scenes, which showed you just how much work, hassle and love went into the ballets.

Also, Lemantov was an idiot for running both Julian and Vicky out of the company--she'd never shown any interest in him beyond the professional relationship, yet he got all mad and jealous as hell when he found out she was kicking it with the composer. It was obvious that he liked her, but he couldn't push past his own rigid rules (and issues) enough to tell her that, which is why the other guy got to her first. Plus, he was a total control freak, and like another poster said, he would have ended up squeezing the life out of her and eventually run her off anyway. Honestly, the ending was silly and messed-up as hell, even for the time in which it was made. I can see why the film still gets some love after 60-some years---the ballet of the Red Shoes and the technical mastery of those scenes are borderline awesome. It also struck me that the directors cast actual adults playing these roles,and not some goofy silly teenagers doing it. Plus it's a pretty mature movie for its time---it actually looks like it was made in the '50's due to the color.

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