Exploring Powell and Pressburger's​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ film-making genius

Marking the film’s 75th anniversary ahead of its cinema rerelease on December 8, Pamela’s book comes in the BFI Film Classics series and is priced £12.99. Pamela is offering an illustrated talk on the film on October 21 at the Chichester Cinema at New Park. She will be offering an introduction to a screening on November 5 at Lewes Depot and a video intro to a screening, the same day, at the Electric Palace, Hastings. On December 17, Pamela will offer a Q&A on The Red Shoes at the Connaught Cinema, Worthing.

As Pamela says, the feverish Technicolor and astonishing ballet sequences for which this film is so renowned are as spellbinding and as disturbing now as ever. In the film a young ballerina is torn between the demands of love and art. Like the heroine of Hans Christian Andersen’s source fairytale, whose magic shoes compel her to dance, Victoria Page – played by real-life ballerina Moira Shearer – finds herself driven to breaking point by obsessive Russian impresario Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) when she’s cast in his ballet The Red Shoes.

“The Red Shoes is the most beautiful of all the ballet films ever made but also the most dangerous. As co-director Michael Powell said it was a film about dying for art. It is a film which ends with a terrible choice between life and love and marriage or high art and the ability to dance. It is a contradictory film. Many young people across the generations have gone into the arts because of it but it is also a film that comes with a warning. I saw the film when I was young and I had long since realised that the ballet lessons in the church hall were not going to lead to Covent Garden but I was completely enthralled by every frame of the film and then completely shocked and appalled by the ending. I think mine was a typical reaction to be absolutely enchanted and then horrified as you then experience the terrible finality of the danger in the film. It's a really devastating ending. I don't want to give anything away but once you have seen it you never forget it. There is an inevitability about the central image in The Red Shoes that means we are all dancing towards doom. With this book I wanted to give a sense of the film and its long history but I also wanted to unentangle the deep and dark references and just try to come to terms with the ending of the film. It is also this bloody and terrible warning and I wanted to explore the contradiction – that it is such a beautiful film but also such a dangerous film, so inspirational but also with such a devastating ending. The BFI have done three or four books devoted to Powell and Pressburger, and you just feel that The Red Shoes absolutely has to be there. It is my favourite Powell and Pressburger film. It’s a real high point in their films.

“And it really is the most beautiful technicolour film ever made.”

Crucial to it is the 17-minute ballet sequence: “It was longer than anybody had done before and it had a huge impact particularly on American cinema. The ballet sequence itself is amazing. It turns into a psychological journey. You see Victoria Page playing the girl in the ballet who desires the shoes and puts on the shoes but then it changes and we see the ballet is almost like an abstract representation of what is going on in Victoria Page’s own psychology. And it is a very dark place…”

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