The Red Shoes

Note : this review is my contribution to the blogathon My Favorite Classic Movie hosted by Rick at Classic Film & TV Café.

The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948)

A young ballet dancer is torn between the man she loves and her pursuit to become a prima ballerina.

As debatable as this affirmation can be, The Red Shoes is The Archers’ masterpiece. And I’m standing firmly on my position about this opinion. Even if they have a bunch of other outstanding films like Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death, and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, the great dancing sequences and the superb composition of frames and the tremendous acting of Moira Shearer and Anton Walbrook, just to name those two, makes it one of the most re watchable movies of all time.

Previously, I wrote The Archers which is the name of the company of co-directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Together they directed nineteen films and half of them are considered as classics and five of the whole lot are at some level masterpieces. We’ll however concentrate our attention on The Red Shoes and its qualities.

With its careful treatment by the Criterion Collection, cinephiles of today can watch it in a condition that is as good as at the time the film was released in 1948. On the question of his favorite film of all time, famous great director Martin Scorsese has often answered The Red Shoes and places it with Jean Renoir’s The River as the two best Technicolor films of all time. His admiration of the film is so strong that the sets and his signature in his film New York, New York are directly inspired by The Archers’ film.

Talking about The Red Shoes’ influence, you have Dario Argento’s masterpiece Suspiria that borrows the vivid colors and aesthetics of its dancing predecessor. Argento’s violent film also has a visual beauty in his Hitchcock horror. In the latest years, the Darren Aronofsky batshit crazy Black Swan film which the story is also about a female ballerina dancer has obviously been projected the crew to get some of the elements and feels. Especially the relationship between the dancer and the director is different but shows how strong this element can be in the life of a ballerina.

It is a sumptuous film that Powell and Pressburger did in The Red Shoes and the production and the final are proving me right when I state, once again, that it is their masterpiece. It’s been ten years since the first time I watched The Red Shoes and I can vividly recall every scene from this first watch. Since then, it became a favorite of mine and this is why choose to pick this movie as my favorite classic film for the first National Classic Movie Day.

Fort Apache (1948)

TSPDT Greatest Films #920 Fort Apache (John Ford, 1948)

The first chapter of John Ford's heroic trilogy on the American cavalry, Fort Apache represents everything about a classic Fordian offering. With his two favorite lead players; guy next door Henry Fonda and the ultimate American father; John Wayne. It's very interesting to see a film where Henry Fonda portrays the antagonist. Once Upon A Time In the West is probably his most famous performance as a bad guy. In a Ford picture, supporting roles are very important, here you have Shirley Temple as Colonel Thursday's daughter Philadelphia, and many Ford regulars like Pedro Armendariz, Ward Bond, and John Agar to name a few. These roles played by regular Ford players are important because they all have a very distinctive mission in the community that cavalry reprensents. The community and the strenght of the people together is the central theme of John Ford's entire oeuvre. The cavalry itself represents this concept and its success relates on the bond, the gentleness of the entire group and the order of this fellowship.

The new Colonel Owen Thursday (Henry Fonda) is sent to Fort Apache to reinstore peace with the tribes living on the reserva near the border of Mexico. He is dreading this assignment and on his way there he says to his daughter that the War in Europa was more interesting. This stubborn character is fueled by a thirst of military honour. His arrival marks the interruption of a dancing night (recurring Fordian mise-en-scène sign of civilized community) illustring his inability to have human relationships and to represent, the strict but, comprehensive leading "father" figure this group diserves. His hate towards this assignment leads him to demand "strictness of military procedure that the men have never found necessary" (Robert Kolker, A Cinema of Loneliness).

The second dance of the film is a long musical sequence that serves the narrative of the film in many ways. First, it holds our breath on the return of Captain York from his encounter with the Indian chief. But also, the evolution of the dance represents the symbol of unity and how the cavalry community should hold together and move on the same rythm and music with synchronized footsteps and tight order.

The characters in Fort Apache all have Irish names, Ford was a proud Irish man and he widely populated his films with Irish people. We found many other recurring aspects Ford's films in Fort Apache, the humouristic supporting cast parts, whiskey drinkers, splendid Monument Valley shots, heroic music, and the sad but realistic racism towards Indians. Realistic because it was the perception Ford had about Indians and sadly many Americans had too. Later in his career John Ford will correct this situation with another Western that tries to replace these errors: Cheyenne Autumn.

In John Ford's filmography, Fort Apache represents one of the many great films he directed. Like Robert Kolker wrote in his book A Cinema of Loneliness; Fort Apache was one of the films that inspired the form of Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory. I recommend both films even if their conclusions differ from one another: Ford vision of life was that humans must live in community to reach for a perfect society and everyone must participate. On the other hand, Kubrick's vision is way more nihilistic and he concludes with the inevitable impotency of Colonel Dax in his request in front of the Generals and the heaviness of these buffons. Kubrick's film is more based on antimilitarism in a time of the Cold War. His film tries to denonciate the State, the Army, and how it litteraly uses young men has cannon flesh (chair à canons).

La terra trema (1948)

TSPDT Greatest Films #458 La terra trema (Luchino Visconti, 1948)

Shot in Sicily with authentic villagers, La terra trema presents the story of a family of fishermen. The naturalist take on the story and the reality that the Luchino Visconti wanted to reprensent in this film is sometimes credited as the first Neorealist film. I tend to think that Rome Open City was the first Italian Neorealist film. It was also the beginning of a competition between the two directors Visconti and Roberto Rossellini. Both have directed magnificent films and put their names in the pantheon of Cinema forever. But their films always had their own ways.

La terra trema tells the story of Ntoni's family, opressed by the sellers of their fisheries that make profit on the efforts of the fishermen. Ntoni has seen the world, he was in the army and he plans to get rid of the sellers and own his own business and keep the main part of the profits for his family. He wishes to prosper and get the heart of his the girl he is in love with. His plan gave good results and the family earn money and respect but one day a storm was announced but Ntoni didn't wanted to loss any opportunity to make profit and pay his debts. But his arrogance cost him the boat of his family and all the fishing material.

The story represents how greed and capitalism is a bad thing and how the workers must ally together against the exploiters and found communities to erase the order of the capitalism. The message is broad and even if its told by commom men, it feels forced and demagogic. The communism message that was getting more and more popularity in Italia got its film. The lenght of the film is also a bummer, 160 minutes of screaming non-actors Italians was getting on my nerves too. The message of the film witnesses the thought of the time and has a lack of subtility. Worth a look but not an essential film.

Louisiana Story (1948)

Louisiana Story (Robert J. Flaherty, 1948)

The documentary genre is probably the least favorite of the cinephile circles. Maybe it's just my subjectivity that is talking, but I tend to think that one would prefer a good story to forget about the current day to day issues and have a good time at the movies instead of being told about environmental issues and/or the closing of ten industries. However, each time I watch a documentary I always have a good time and I always love to learn something new or to be informed on issues other than my little self. On some level, the film that will be discussed here, Louisiana Story, is a non-documentary for me. It has a story written by the Flahertys, editing and many narrative elements. Anyhow, the plot is actually so thin that I think that the images talk for themselves.

Filmed in the bayous of Louisiana and following a little boy that fishes, plays with his raccon, hunts crocodiles and make friends with the workers of the derick put in front of his home could easily described the 80 minutes film called Louisiana Story. Far from being boring, the naturalist images displayed reminded me of the National Geographic documentaries my mom made us watch on Saturday afternoons. I always loved watching the fauna and the flora like if I was in the forest watching the animals do their things and live without the presence of humans. The first part of the film shows us how the boy lives his life and how he survived before the derick came in front of his home. When the derick arrives we pratically learn how it digs at the same the boy did. He befriends with a worker called Tom. Even if he had lived all his life in nature the boy is attracted to the machines that men build. Those machines are actually destroying the elements of his bayou. The conclusion of the story would have been very different today; it would have had a stronger environmental issue about it and how it lacks in respects towards the Earth.

The cajun culture depicted in the movie is very interesting, because those people talked English but mostly French. Their accent is pretty unique and the way they lived too. It makes this document even more unique and precious. I know that the lifestyle of the cajun people has disappeared and like some languages that aren't spoken anymore they have to be documented for the generations to come.

The narrative aspects of Louisiana Story reminded me of the neorealist films of Roberto Rossellini, Stromboli especially with the sequence of the fishermans. It is also a lot like a Cinema-Vérité documentary style and the comparison with neorealism is the best I can find. Because, Louisiana Story uses some narratives and tells a simple and beautiful story. But the narrative tools are the reality of the situations and the purge of useless plot elements.

Anno 1948 in Germania

TSPDT Greatest Films #251 Germania anno zero aka Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1948)


With his Roma, citta aperta, Roberto Rossellini invented the Italian Neorealism. It was not a film genre but more like a current or a different approach to filmmaking. Rossellini wanted to tell "real" stories of "real" people with the few or if possible no dramatic or manipulative elements.

With Germania anno zero Rossellini clearly annonces his intentions to bring hope and faith in the lives of all those who suffered during and after World War II. With objective camera and objective storytelling he wanted to tell the story of Edmund the more realistic possible. His camera is constantly moving, the lighting is crude or very dark, it gives a documentary-like aspect to the feature. This is Italian Neorealism at its best.

A young boy, Edmund twelve years old lives with his sick father, his older sister waiting for her husband to come back from the front, and his older brother hiding from the police because he didn't surrender when Allies troops entered Berlin. They manage to survive with the minimum.

Those desperate times meant desperate measures and to feed his family Edmund stole and sold records of speechs by the Führer for his ex-teacher. This teacher has an important influence on Edmund. When the boy turns back again to his teacher for more help because his father is very ill he misundertood what the teacher told him and made an irrevesible mistake. He murders his father with poison. On some level it could be a very compassionate gesture to be able to dispense his father from pain and his family from this weight they had to carry.

It could only be a child that could think without remorse like that. It shows how the people of Germany (Edmund) were intoxicated by the Führer(the teacher)'s speechs and they could have murdered millions of jews in cold blood. The worst in that case was that the murders past on the people of Germany but were conducted by the Nazi regime that hypnotized and manipulated the population.

This landmark in Italian film is remarquable and I truly consider it as a masterpiece. Having only seen Roberto Rossellini's Roma, citta aperta I'm looking forward to see his Stromboli, Journey to Italy, and The Rise to Power of Louis XIV, etc.

A review by Michaël Parent