Cinema Arts Festival Houston 2009

The Cinema Arts Festival’s culminating event is a free outdoor presentation of The Red Shoes, a film that is, in Ian Christie’s words, “a stunning demonstration of cinema’s claim to have united the traditional arts in a new synthesis.” It is the perfect finale for our festival celebrating film and the arts. It is also a film for the whole family, and it is one of the titles that Tilda Swinton’s 8½ Foundation offers to children to initiate them to the wonders of classic films (although some parents may wish to wait until their kids turn 12, if they fear that the tragic ending, however stylized, may be too strong). Moira Shearer plays Victoria Page, a young dancer who is hired by Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) for his ballet company. She is given the chance, unexpectedly, to assume the leading role in his dance adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Red Shoes. The ballet is a big hit and Victoria becomes a star. But she has fallen in love with the composer, Julian, and thus arouses the jealousy of Lermontov, who cruelly forces her to choose between Julian and her love of ballet. The “Red Shoes” ballet, performed in full length, inspired countless Hollywood musicals that followed, starting with Minnelli’s An American in Paris. Director Michael Powell and producer Emeric Pressburger (known as The Archers) had developed their experiments with Technicolor in films like A Matter of Life and Death and Black Narcissus, and their mastery of studio techniques culminated in the magnificently designed dreamlike spectacle of The Red Shoes. Within this gorgeous artifice, an international ballet company, which evokes Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, is believably represented by Sadler’s Wells ballet star Shearer, leading Diaghilev dancer Leonide Massine and eminent choreographer Robert Helpmann.