The Red Shoes @ 60.

To mark the occasion, the New York Times has turned to its chief dance critic, Alastair Macaulay: "Melodrama! Kitsch! Ham! Entirely undistinguished choreography!" To be fair, further in he adds, "Even so, The Red Shoes remains a classic."

The piece has infuriated the Siren no end:

The movie is about a commitment to art that drives an artist to her grave, and [Michael] Powell's dedication to showing the incredible preparation that must go into a single performance is part of the movie's realism.

I said realism and I meant it. The ultimate accomplishment of The Red Shoes is the way it combines the dream world of a ballet performance and the spiritual dedication to art, with the actual backbreaking work of the artist and the life sacrifices that ballet demands. Vicky's death scene is sneeringly described by Macaulay as "sheer Tosca" and "sheer Anna Karenina," as though either source is a hallmark of kitsch. Powell's memoirs, which Macaulay might greatly benefit from reading, remark on how the bloodiness of that scene struck the British critics as "bad taste." "The whole point of the scene," Powell countered, "was the conflict between romance and realism, between theatre and life." Indeed, that's the whole point of the movie.

Further exploration? The Wikipedia entry on the film will take you all sorts of places.

Posted by dwhudson at August 31, 2008 12:39 PM