
The Red Shoes
4.3
(398)
Drama
Romance
1948
133 min
NR
In this classic drama, Vicky Page is an aspiring ballerina torn between her dedication to dance and her desire to love. While her imperious instructor, Boris Lermontov, urges to her to forget anything but ballet, Vicky begins to fall for the charming young composer Julian Craster. Eventually Vicky, under great emotional stress, must choose to pursue either her art or her romance, a decision that carries serious consequences.
Starring:
Drama
Romance
Music
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""The music is all that matters. Only the music."
+ This is one of the most visually arresting films ever made. A colorful, cinematic, painting-in-motion that shifts its style of paints like a chameleon. The costumes and curtains of the ballet numbers and set interiors fold in like oiled brush strokes; the exterior settings bleed like saturated acrylic, and the lights pop as if drawn with bright, neon chalk. The music elevates the visual palette giving this whole world a life of its own. It's a song that visually dances from one frame to the next, exploring the vast range of human emotion. It also features one of the most breathtaking dance sequences that lasts 17 minutes long and blurs the line between the real dance the characters show their live audience in the story and their inner song that they share with us. Only cinema could accomplish this feat. It is a transcendental quality where fantasy meets reality in one of the most spectacular sequences in any movie, period. The characters themselves carry a mythic, archetypal quality that plays like living, melodramatic notes in an opera. The script is amazing, the camera movements are smooth and the editing moves the narrative forward effortlessly. A darker, more passionate alternative to Singin' In The Rain. Easily an all time favorite.
SUGGESTION: For those of you who do double features, this would go great with Amadeus! Just throwing that out there.
A perfect blend of visual splendor, opera, and ballet. Tragic and enduring story. I can't recommend this enough."