THE RED SHOES
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (UK, 1948)
Starring Moira Shearer
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WINNER - BEST ART DIRECTION AND MUSIC
NOMINATED - BEST PICTURE, EDITING, AND SCREENPLAY
1948 ACADEMY AWARDS

Directors Powell and Pressburger, who called their unique creative partnership The Archers, were no strangers to controversy. Each film they made aimed it's barb at complacency and tackled a new creative challenge. They intended for this story, of a ballerina's life backstage, to turn into a manifesto for the claims of art over mundane life.

Through a young dancer's eyes, unforgettably played by Moira Shearer, we meet a young composer, played by Marius Goring, and we enter a ballet company under the leading dancer and choreographer Robert Helpmann. At the center of the company is the malevolent charming impresario Boris Lermontov. Lermontov lives through his creations. People and relationships are ruthlessly subordinated to a drive that inevitably reminds us of the drive to make films. Under the authoritarian rule this charismatic ballet impresario, his proteges realize the full promise of their talents, but at a price: utter devotion to their art and complete loyalty to Lermontov himself.

Under his guidance, the young ballerina is poised for superstardom, but earns Lermontov's scorn when she falls in love with the composer of "The Red Shoes," the ballet Lermontov is staging to showcase her talents.

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FULLY RESTORED IMMACULATE 35MM PRINT
FROM THE FAIRY TALE BY HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

"The film is voluptuous in its beauty and passionate in its storytelling. You don't watch it, you bathe in it."
- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"A look beneath its lushly romantic surface reveals a dark, complex sensibility, and that surface, rendered in the somber tones of British Technicolor, reflects a fantastically rich cinematic inventiveness."
- Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader