The Red Shoes

If you hold that ballet (or the dance) is the beginning and end of art, or the joyous meeting ground for all the arts, then you will probably be disappointed in the new British film, "The Red Shoes." If you are disinterested in ballet, however, you will probably find it unusual but solid entertainment.

The show is almost stolen by the clowning of Leonide Massinc, who could almost be called the Grand Old Man of the Dance, if he would allow the "Old." But he does not steal the show because new, red-headed Moira Shearer does. Looking as fetching as Becky Thatcher grown up, Miss Shearer is also a surprisingly capable actress in this, her first film. She plays the young ballerina and dances the lead in "The Red Shoes" ballet, based on the Hans Anderson tale, and carries off both with more talent and wile than has been seen in a long while.

But it is a disappointing film because its core, the ballet, is not good. The fault lies in the filming, editing, and staging, not in the dancing. The camera is not expected to film a ballet entirely from fifth-row-center but neither should it show the movements of the dance as if they were viewed from an aerial kaleidoscope. The whole effect (except for the final bit at the church) is only that--effect. One gets the idea of Miss Shearer leaping through seas of rippling cellophane and grotesque faces, but there are hardly 20 continuous minutes of sustained dancing. Miss Shearer is lost and with her the dance.

"The Red Shoes" is unusual in that it presents for the first time in an English-speaking film, a faithful picture of the "Chaos! Chaos! Chaos!" (as one dancer bemoans) out of which all stage art must be born. The wonderfully affected, simple people of the theater are all there: fending, loving, and enchanting everyone, and none more enchanted than themselves.

It is solid entertainment because it tells the ever-fascinating tale of two lovers, parted by the demands of their separate muses. Love versus Art is always good, and since the setting for most of this story is backstage, the ingredients for an entertaining motion picture plot are all there.

This accurate study of backstage ballet life is possible because the producers hit upon the idea of employing real ballet dancers to play the parts. Robert Helpmann, who is not only the biggest attraction in British ballet but also a Shakespearean actor, is given a featured role. Ludmilla Teherina plays herself, a temperamental but very luscious prima ballerina.

Unfortunately, however, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who wrote, produced, and directed the film, have chosen to alter the usual happy reconciliation of the two lovers to parallel the ballet-plot. The result is a wrenching, brutal, and totally unnecessary tragic ending to a story that contains no other tragic elements.