I always feel a bit uncomfortable with the idea that someone can become really skilled in a field. There are times when dedication seems like a form of erasure. Slowly, the thing you love takes over the space that could be used for everything else.

I remember coming across this idea. It shows up in different stories, about musicians who keep playing until their fingers are raw, writers who sacrifice their sleep, and athletes who live just to win. Their lives are shaped by that one goal, as everything else fades into the background.

Usually, we naturally romanticize people like this. Their suffering turns into its own story, especially when others are also suffering. It’s less romantic when you see someone sacrifice their whole life for an ideal they can’t reach. In The Red Shoes, the allure of perfection shows how beauty can be a very complicated way to hurt yourself.

Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, it tells the story of a young ballerina who gets the chance to become an artist. However, she realizes that the institution offering her this opportunity demands her life in return. Boris Lermontov, the impresario of Ballet Lermontov, expresses this philosophy with a conviction that feels like a religious command, or maybe just some absurd workplace rule.

When a man asked Victoria Page why she wanted to dance, she replied by asking why he wanted to live. For Lermontov, devotion to art is a way to live life. Someone lives to dance, to become a diversion. Love, friendship, marriage, and even the chance to sit down and eat a sandwich fade away and disappear.

However, the question is whether this film agrees with that. Powell and Pressburger understood how captivating a dedication could be, and the dance segment in this film suggests that for Powell and Pressburger, creating a work of art was very close to that.

The same sequence also shows the hidden explicitness within that idealism. Beauty and suffering are actually very close, interconnected. The presence of one makes the other hard to see. From this contradiction, the red shoes are beautiful, indescribable in words, and promise success. However, slowly, they turn the wearer into a prisoner of their own dreams.

The Red Shoes communicates through visuals like colors, costumes, lighting, how elements are arranged on screen, the characters’ movements, and the rich imaginative settings they are in. These elements become the way the film conveys ideas, acting as the language of the film itself.

According to Rudolf Arnheim’s view of cinema as an art form and Laura U. Marks’ idea of “haptic visuality,” they offer a way to see film as a creation that tries to make you feel part of the experience controlled by the work itself, through the process of watching it.

In his 1932 book, Film as Art, Arnheim challenged the idea that a film’s artistic value depends on its ability to mimic reality, seeing the medium’s limitations as key to cinema’s creative power. Framing removes certain details, lighting changes how objects look, perspective shifts our sense of space, and editing rearranges time. Instead of seeing these changes as flaws, Arnheim viewed them as the basic elements of expressionism.

If you pay attention to how Powell and Pressburger worked on The Red Shoes, the spaces they created are theatrical. The colors are so bright and intense, as if they came up with a new type of paint but don’t trick you into thinking it’s real. The film makes it clear that it’s a story built from art.

This film’s visuals are also often talked about as a kind of “gift” from Technicolor, where the cinematography just worked out, and everyone involved was satisfied with the results. In fact, the use of color in it was more planned than that.

Jack Cardiff’s cinematography and Hein Heckroth’s production design create a visual where the artificial nature of the film acts as a psychological tool, not trying to make us think we’re watching reality, and inviting you to realize that you’re seeing an interpretation of reality.

The place where the ballet group works isn’t fancy. The atmosphere is simple, with the practice room, office, preparation room, and hallways showing the life of an artist. It’s in these places that they discuss work, talk about performances, and practice dancing.

On the other hand, the ballet sequence abandons that spatial logic. The setting in the ballet sequence shifts from a carnival to a dance hall, a desert, architectural spaces, and then to the expanse of the sky, a manifestation of imagination that doesn’t separate physical space from the mind. I see this ballet sequence as a story that keeps changing with every breath.

Arnheim’s focus on abstraction explains why this common visual deviation feels artificial. However, this aspect actually strengthens its impact. When Powell and Pressburger explore ideas in ways that regular stage productions can’t, while moving away from realism, they can reach their domain even more thoroughly.

The camera becomes a means of transformation, able to go beyond the limits of the stage, ignore the physical limitations of the theater, and create a backdrop that aligns with the dancers. You are watching a translation of these dancers into film.

Ballet represents the difficult situation Victoria faces, focusing on a girl who gets a pair of magical red shoes that force her to dance endlessly. At first, the shoes embody her desires. She feels excited about the chance to dance, as if everything is wide open for her.

However, in the end, the shoes didn’t want to stop, no matter how tired the girl was, whatever was happening around her, or how hard she tried to take control of her steps. Even though it’s just a metaphor, many modern health and safety departments would have a lot of questions about those shoes.

The dance became a reflection of the situation happening around Victoria. The girl in the dance became the role she played and a version of herself that she was shaping within her.

Julian Craster and Lermontov are part of the ballet, with roles that place them in Victoria’s life. The shoemaker character, played by Léonide Massine, is unsettling because his advances toward the girl are similar to the chance Lermontov gives Victoria. Both offer success while also creating a dependence whose impact isn’t immediately visible.

Besides blurring the line between acting and real life, this ballet seems to know what’s going to happen, as if Victoria’s performance is a preparation for the end of her story. The fictional dancer and the real dancer share the same thoughts.

Besides that, there’s a comparison with Charles Perrault’s fairy tales. In that context, the film offers a fresh perspective. Usually, Perrault’s stories explore futility, temptation, expectations, and the consequences of foolishness through a simple narrative. On the other hand, Powell and Pressburger keep the shoe element but change its moral meaning. They shift the focus from the patterns in the original fairy tale to an obsession, showing the price one has to pay in chasing a dream.

Victoria is an artist whose biggest dream is linked to something that destroys her, turning the message in the story into a reflection on what it means to be an artist and what has to be sacrificed.

In my opinion, the effectiveness of that ballet really depends on Moira Shearer’s presence, who was a ballerina before becoming an actress and has an amazing ability to communicate through movement. When standing still, her presence already hints at the next move.

Her work creates a connection between the dancer’s body and film gimmicks, watching it through her body shape, the precision of her movements, the way her arms and legs stretch, and her flexibility as she occupies the spaces around her.

This brings me back again to the concept of visuality according to Marks, which offers a way to think about how it connects with your senses. In The Skin of the Film (2000), Marks introduces optical visuality that focuses on distance, clarity, and gaze as a space structured with information.

Referring to the way of seeing that treats it as a touch focused on that representation, the observer pays attention to the texture, surface, and its physicality. There is an emphasis on how it “feels.” Apart from visually, it requires a personal way of seeing, where the act of looking is the act of touching.

Applying this idea to the Technicolor film so beautifully crafted in 1948 might feel a bit odd. Marks developed her own perspective on different types of filmmaking (especially those that don’t follow straightforward or conventional visual storytelling) by focusing on what you feel when watching the film. For that reason, how The Red Shoes arranges its images and movements?

When touched, the images are so real. You can almost feel the smoothness of ballet shoes, the luxury of the costumes, and the details of the stage. The way the fabric flows and moves with the dancers’ movements invites you to reflect on how the texture of objects feels under our hands, how the body fills space, and how movement can’t entirely be put into words. It’s about what we feel it.

Look at those red shoes themselves. Visually, the shoes are really striking and have a tangible physical form, something that’s worn directly on the body and changes because of physical contact. Their meaning comes from the relationship between the shoes and the person wearing them.

Those shoes are beautiful because they can be scary and demand something from us, as accessories, instruments, and a means of coercion. Seem simple, yet they hold a complexity that keeps evolving. Shoes are objects that make ambition real in the body.

Focusing on the body, that focus makes the relationships shown feel a bit uncomfortable. Ballet is presented as an art of grace, but comes from a discipline that’s obsessive. The dancers’ movements look easy, while the hard work required to create them is hidden.

Every movement you see on stage is the result of years of training, with repetition, pain, and control of the body. Although you only see the outcome, without realizing the years of effort that brought it, you praise dancers for being able to push limits, yet hesitate to acknowledge that these come from pushing those to the point of breaking. The price paid is hidden.

Impossible to ignore, the dance Shearer performs is so graceful. Her movements never separate from the physical that carries them. She has weight, direction, faces resistance, and builds momentum, allowing us to see ballet as grounded, made of flesh, effort, strength, action.

With the dancer’s body as an experience that can be felt, though we might not physically feel the exhaustion from those, the images shown give us enough information to imagine the weight and strength of the dancers, which then becomes perceived through sight and by engaging our imagination.

In the odd moments of the ballet, as the girl dances through various places that are unfamiliar, the way her body interacts with the space around her starts to waver. She moves through places change according to her feelings, and the visual like it has.

The carnival had a festive and a possibilities, but the strange characters and their distorted clear that the joy of dancing was unsettling. Grotesque masks, the dance floor, and the wide expanse of desert created a feeling as if it had loosened its ties with existence. The dancer kept moving through the carnival, while the places she passed through were unfriendly.

The desert imagery brings up ideas of exposure, loneliness, and test, reflecting the dancer’s exhaustion, stuck somewhere.

The dance kept going. It was those shoes that made it happen, and the steps turned the dance into an expenditure, a physical act that had nothing to do with joy or satisfaction. Silly, the movement kept going when there was no left to keep moving.

The language is beautiful in a weird way from start to finish. Maybe that’s the problem with the film. The movie wants you to see images that show both pain and entrapment. Though the meaning behind them is actually getting darker, those red shoes look so tempting.

The beauty of ballet, when the story becomes sad, now becomes part of that sadness. We come to understand that the things that make us enjoy a performance can hide behind creating it. The things that make us love ballet can also cover up the conditions that allow the performance to happen.

When we think about the film’s relationship with its own art form, The Red Shoes is a film about shows what cinema can do (things that ballet as a stage art can’t do). The camera can get close to the dancers, follow their movements, change the environment around them, and place them in locations that would be impossible to build on a stage.

Editing helps filmmakers connect movement and imagery in ways how we enjoy the dance, creating a connection than watching it live. Technicolor adds another by turning it rich with color and atmosphere. Also, the way light and shadows fall on the stage becomes part of the story. Cinema reworks the ballet using film tools like sound, timing, and imagery to create something new. The ballet is taken and adapted to the language of the big screen.

For Arnheim, the film uses the camera’s features to create a completely new experience.

The way the shots are taken, the editing, the lighting, and the abstraction part of the performance, between the two art forms merge, push each other to be more than what existed before.

Lermontov’s Ballet is portrayed as a collective effort, built from the hard work of dancers, composers, choreographers, designers, musicians, and everyone else who helps bring a performance to life. Lermontov might see himself as the central, but the film keeps us comes from just one person.

The splendor relies on the combined efforts of Powell, Pressburger, Cardiff, Heckroth, Brian Easdale, Robert Helpmann, Massine, Shearer, and many others, as the organizing institutions try to centralize their authority by each of its parts.

Lermontov is a complicated figure, representing all destructive possibilities that come from his dedication to ballet being absolute, and his ability to recognize Victoria’s potential is sincere. He saw something in Victoria that no one else had noticed, while giving her the support she needed to grow.

Slowly, his admiration turned possessiveness. He wanted Victoria to be the kind of dancer demanded by his philosophy. To him, Victoria’s talent was precious, while Victoria’s independent desires were seen as a nuisance.

Julian Craster offered a particular perspective on living an artistic life. According to Julian Craster’s view, creative work can go hand in hand with affection and relationships. Lermontov saw this idea as a weakness and believed that love could endanger a person’s greatness. Love brings obligations that clash with the demands of professionalism.

It’s clear that both men (though different from each other) view Victoria’s as someone who can negotiate. One man wants Victoria to belong to the art medium, and the other wants Victoria to belong to the sphere of love. Victoria wonders if there’s any way for her to belong to herself.

Its tragic vibe shows that the choices available are so messed up that Victoria can’t escape the pressure weighing on her. It’s wrong to take the ending as a message that ambition and love can’t go hand in hand.

A troubling possibility is that people around Victoria have created a situation where she’s expected to give up one part of her identity to satisfy another. Regardless of which, the problem is that the world around her can’t imagine a woman having multiple desires without having to sacrifice any of them.

Victoria’s body becomes a means for her to create art, while also being an object that others try to control, admire, shape, display, judge, and push beyond its limits.

Automatically, the camera shows this in detail, but visibility doesn’t grant freedom. Being seen as an artist doesn’t always mean being recognized as an individual, and visibility alone doesn’t guarantee freedom, especially when the performance heavily relies on the display of women’s bodies.

Even so, Shearer’s performance makes it hard for us to see Victoria as just admired. Her movements on screen show a way of expressing herself that isn’t in line with Lermontov’s ideas. The film keeps showing that Victoria is an artist, someone who, through her movements, can radiate thoughts that those guiding her had planned.

Her body follows the rules of ballet in every demanding movement and pose, becoming her voice, a way to express the infinity of the choreography. The tension, a blend of constraint, makes her dancing so powerful. Moves with full control carry emotion. Tightly, she is disciplined and focused, yet full of passion, an artist whose identity is bound to a structure that swallowed her whole.

Therefore, the tragedy at the end of this film Victoria’s death makes us rethink the connection between beauty and suffering that the film has been building from the start.

We’ve been invited to feel joy in the dance, appreciate its beauty, and understand the effort it takes to make it happen. Now, those same qualities seem tied to destruction. The performance has a depiction of the price that must be paid for a goal with no limits.

Of course, there’s an irony in the fact that The Red Shoes the object of the tribute that it examines. However, it has inspired generations of filmmakers, dancers, choreographers, and other artists. The film has a strong impact, and its language is very vibrant to those who aren’t aware of its behind-the-scenes.

Maybe its greatest lasting success is its ability to not separate admiration from suspicion. It lets you feel the beauty of art, while questioning what might be hidden behind that.

Is it possible to imagine a life where the two don’t have to consume each other? Red shoes never get tired, but humans can. Between these two lies the tragedy of Victoria Page, as well as the eternal nature of Powell and Pressburger’s film.

References

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