The Red Shoes
1948

The Red Shoes
1948
133 minutes

Communication refers to the ability to send a message from a sender to a receiver. There are channels (vocal – auditory or written) and codes (language is one).

The nature of language has been debated for many decades =even centuries. Since definitions come in many kinds the problem is intensified. There are usage definitions, technical definitions operational definitions and so on.

Usage: How people usually use the word (murder – to kill someone – does it include animals?0<[> Murder has a technical definition in law which restricts it somewhat. When Ted Kennedy was involved with the death of Mary Jo Kopechne many of Kennedy’s supporters objected to people saying that Kennedy murdered Kopechne since the charge was Manslaughter which is different in law than murder. So PRO Kennedy people argued for the technical definition while ANTI Kennedy used the usage definition. Later when Bill Clinton said under oath that he “never had sex with that women” (Monica Lewingsky) PRO Clinton people argued that many people don’t regard oral sex as sex ANTI Clinton people argued that Clinton was a lawyer and was being asked the question in a legal framework (a court) and since the law defines oral sex as sex (and even grammatically the term “oral sex” means some kind of sex) then he was either lying or is an extremely stupid lawyer who doesn’t understand the legal meaning of the term. It was also argues that if a bank robber doesn’t think robbery is a crime then why should he be tried?

There are lots of examples of the differences between usage definitions which are often looser than technical ones. (Operational definitions are often found when people are trying to work through a problem and they try to isolate some aspects of a phenomenon in order to get a better understanding of it. If the definition becomes useful or productive it may become a technical definition)

So language in “usage” is quite different than language technically defined. In usage people talk about “The language of flowers” not that flowers talk to each other but that different flowers have different meanings associated with them. The flower itself carries meaning along with verbal references to the flower and its appearance in paintings and films. Hence the red flowers which film the screen in Black Narcissus are those often associated with female sexuality. Red roses are often associated with love (My love is like a red red rose) (Consider “fig leaves”, carnations, orchids and so on. See the garden in Suddenly Last Summer for its meaning. Stage Door contains the famous Heburn line “The calla lilies are in bloom again. Such a strange flower—suitable to any occasion. I carried them on my wedding day, and now I place them here in memory of something that has died.”

A good artist knows many of these references and uses them effectively in writing, paintings, films. (Again, the decision to use a flower is a choice of variable (use/no use) and which flower to use is a choice (among many). WHAT GOVERNS THE CHOICE.

There is much discussion about the question of whether or not certain animals have “language” or not. While few would deny animals communicate, whether it is language or not depends on whether one defines language as the equivalent of communication or not. Most linguists would not hold that position. A dog scratching on a door communicates a message to the person standing nearby but one doubts that this is the equivalent of language. The argument normally rages around Chimps (and other apes) and whales (occasionally elephants).

Duality of Patterning, Displacement are often cited as defining characteristcis of language. Oher aspects may be had by other forms of communication, but some are unique to human speech

SEMANTICITY

The capacity for carry reasonably concrete meaning. A characteristic of language. There is a distinct reference for the word.

The quality that a linguistic system has of being able to convey meanings, in particular by reference to the world of physical reality.

7. Semanticity -- This means that specific signals can be matched with specific meanings. This is a fundamental aspect of all communication systems. For example, in French, the word sel means a white, crystalline substance consisting of sodium and chlorine atoms. The same substance is matched with the English word salt. Anyone speaker of these languages will recognize that the signal sel or salt refers to the substance sodium chloride.

Dance music and film all lack semanticity as it appears in language

MANY OF THE FORMS OF COMMUNICATION LACK SPECIFICITY – that is the form has a very SPECIALIZED meaning. Powell’s virtual distrust of language is perhaps rooted in the fact that the very specificity itself is a hindrance, restricting meaning, rather than leaving it with a wide set of emotional meanings. Hence many things become ineffable or incapable of being expressed in words. (Remember Isadora Duncan’s ““If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it”

There are a number of discussions about this sentence – some of which revolve around the idea that we should like to be able to make verbal all things in the unconscious. If you think about the line and its possible meanings it has perhaps at its root a statement about the nature of “art” which somehow “Communicates” (but not in language) things which cannot be communicated in language i.e. are ineffable. This parallels lines “science can’t explain everything” and in some sense, the supernatural horror films tend to come down on the side of the supernatural’s exsistence. Art, like the supernatural tends toward the mystical – something which can not be explained through science or expressed in words, hence the LINKAGE BETWEEN MYSTICISM, SUPERNATURALISM AND ART.

Powell and Pressburger frequently play in their films with contrasts between language and a visual or other form of communication, Powell reject the words of the script (but not the ideas) and finding ways to communicate that information through other means – always visual, but often through sound, especially music.

THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE

Bronislaw Malinowski, the famous Polish anthropologist defined two realms – The Sacred and The Profane. These constitute different symbolic spaces.

The theater (performing arts in general) often define the space where the performance takes place as “sacred”. Martha Graham used to do a small ritual for the floor (space) in which the performance take place. The place is defined in many ways and the “dressing” or perhaps more aptly put “changing room” is where the actor transforms into the character of the performance. (We mentioned this previously as what happens to athletes as well).

At a performance of cats a former actor approached the stage to get an autograph during intermission, went up the ramp but not onto the stage and handed the performer the poster to vbe signed. The performer said “Don’t you want to come onto a Broadway stage. The actor said “I’ve been there, but I’m not sanctified” The performer said “What do you mean” The actor said something unprintable and left.

A clown at CBCB was approached by a member of the audience in the intermission when the clowns were signing autographs. The sudience member started to talk to the clown about the previous act in which a bear rode a motorcycle and the clown was now in a police uniform. The audience member said “You know the bear doesn’t seem to have a licence”. The clown came out of character and started to explain why he didn’t need one since he was only in the ring blah blah blah, The audience member was rightfully disgusted by the clown’s unwillingness to play with him.

So the idea of magic (sacred) space and art becomes unified. It is not the sacredness of organized religion like Christianity, Judaism or Islam, but something more magical and personal rather than institutionalized

Visually, stories can be told in many ways, and often what is in the frame is significant because it also carried “symbolic” diffuse meaning, like the brilliant red and pink flowers that fill the screen in Black Narcissus as the winter ends and the flowers reappear. All manners of symbolism are coded into the films which the audience needs to decipher (hermeneutics). Visual artists understand color, composition, lighting and so on as well as potential symbolic meanings of things whether it is the language of flowers, Freudian symbolism or any of a thousand other ways to communicate meaning. Among these thousands are 2 that have special meaning for Powell – music and dance. So it is important in watching The Red Shoes to be aware of all the meanings that might be associated with these areas of symbolic expression.

The film occurs in the middle of problems about conflicts in the importing of American films. With an embargo on American films, Korda went out on a limb to produce some extravaganza which put the company in debt, and then the embargo was lifted. The film was The Red Shoes and appears to have gone 100% over budget with no one in Corda’s group having seen any of it.

The script was an older one of Pressburger’s based on a tale by the famous story teller Hans Christian Andersen. It concerns a girl who wants a pair of red shoes to wear when she goes to a dance. Pressburger had sold to Korda and he and Powell needed to buy it back from Korda. without him realizing that they were about to make it into a film. Had Korda realized this he would have demanded a much higher price. Of course the script is not the Hans Christian Andersen story, but rather it is rooted in it. Andersen’s fairy tales, like those of the Grimm Brothers are often charged with horrific elements (in Cinderella the sisters cut off toes to try to get the slipper on and in the Red Shoes, the shoes are removed by a woodsman who cuts them off with an ax and the feet depart as well, leaving the young girl with tree branches for feet). Ballet, like all dance, is heavily concentrated on the feet, but in ballet it seems intensified given the problem of being “on point”. Watch for instances dealing with feet symbolically. What can you make of them?V Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (24 January 1776 – 25 June 1822),was a German early Romantic (or pre-Romantic) writer who produced a number of horror and supernatural tales which form the basis for Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann about which we will have more to say in weeks to come. He also wrote The Nutcracker and the Mouse King which becomes the subject matter for Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker ballet. The ballet Coppelia by Leo Delibes is based on two stories Der Sandmann und Die Puppe (A doctor Coppelius has a life sized doll so real that one of the village men deserts his true human love for the doll) (Compare Metropolis). His influence on Powell and Pressburger in their operatic/balletic works seems strong.His interest in showing how inner life and outer world are inseparable fits into the Powell Pressburger mold with little or no difficulty. It is clear in this film. It is a heavily fictionalized Hoffmann who is the Hoffmann of the Tales of Hoffmann

There are a variety of stories about what happened during the making of the film as one might expect. Different people claim different things about the production, so it is almost impossible to say what happened. Powell claimed that Shearer was interested in the money; she claimed she never wanted to do it and was pushed into it by the director of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet who was tired of being hassled by Powell. Shearer claimed that he was a bad director, disinterested in the problems of the dancers in filming and often chose the worst performances because the technical aspect of the shot was better. (Dancers don’t like to work in 25 second takes for example), One wonders then, why she went on to make Tales of Hoffman and Peeping Tom.

PERSONNEL: SOME CHANGES SOME NOT

The film also saw some important changes in Powell’s group, although again, the reasons seem depend on who is telling the story. Alfred Junge, the set and artistic designer who had won academy awards for Black Narcissus left after Powell removed him from this position for having said that Powell was going too far in what he wanted to do in the film. Powell replaced him as production designer and as costume designer with Hein Heckroth who would continue with the Archers through Hour of Glory Gone to Earth, Fighting Pimpernel, Tales of Hoffmann and Oh… Rosalinda!! Additionally he was an artistic advisor for Battle of the Rover Plate He was German (Hessian) born like Junge and had worked for a German ballet company. He worked on the costumes for Matter of Life and Death and Black Narcissus as well as working in the costume and wardrobe department for those films. Interestingly enough when someone suggested him to replace Junge, Powell didn’t know who he was which made Powell upset since he generally knew all the

technicians. Gray, who had written several scores was hired to do the music, but they were unhappy with it and used Brian Easdale again, who had done Black Narcissus and would continue with Small Back Room, Gone to Earth Fighting Pimpernel, Battle for the River Plate and Return to the Edge of the World. Easdale was to have conducted his own score, but instead suggested Sir Thomas Beecham. Easdale gets the credit for conducting the score. Beecham oversaw rhe recording. The film is one of the “COMPOSED FILMS” with the music having been written before the film is made (as indeed it is of course in ballet)

Marius Goring who appears as conductor 71 returns here as the composer Julian Craster and will appear in Ill Met by Moonlight

Anton Walbrook would return to the Archers for the film. He plays Lermontov, the head of the ballet company whose character seems to have been based on the famous impresario Diaghilev and not a small bit on Alexander Korda, some of Powell and some of Pressburger himself. (Likely Hitchcock could have served as well as a model). Diaghilev had dropped a dancer for getting married. When the great Russian ballerina Pavolova died, he had one of her ballets performed without the character appearing, but by just letting the spotlight follow where she would have been.

The virtually bind Esmond Knoght would play Livy in the film and would appear in Powell’s notorious Peeping Tom

Robert Helpmann who played deJong in …one of our aircraft is missing and would appear again in Tales of Hofmannwas the partner to lading ballerina at Saddlers Wells ballet, Margot Fonteyn. He did the choreography for the Red Shoes ballet.

The film also counted among its luminaries, Leonide Massine (1896) , of the Ballet Russe where he had been hired to replace Nijinsky. Many consider(ed) Massine to be the greatest choreographer of his time. He danced into his 60s and choreographed up until his death in 1979 at 82.

The film also introduced one of the ballerinas from the Saddler’s Wells ballet, Moira Shearer (King), born in Dunfermline Scotland in 1926. The complexity of getting her loose from Saddler’s Wells (who wanted them to use Margot Fonteyn, their prima ballerina) was a complex thing.

She appears also in Tales of Hoffman and a handful of other films including the infamous Peeping Tom. She also appeared in The Story of Three Loves. She retired from the ballet stage at 27 as a result of health problems and an injury and pursued a somewhat unsuccessful career in the theater. She claimed that he move to do Red Shoes seriously damaged her ballet career. Fay Wray had similar problems after King Kong in that she was always thought of as the woman who screams her way through that film.

The film is expressionistic and rather dramatically so, which was caused the rift between Powell and Junge in pre-production.

WATCH for the typical Powell Pressburger moves (that define the style) and compare it with Black Narcissus. What are the similarities and the differences?

In what ways is the film expressionist? In what ways mighit it have connections with Contraband (Blackout)

The film won Academy Awards for Hein Heckroth and Arthur Lawson for best color Art direction and set decoration and for Brian Easdale for best score. It won the Golden Globe award for the best score and was nominated for the best film by BAFTA. The National Board of Review placed it in the top 10 films

AFTER THE FILM

There is a shift from the “war films” and what the point of the sacrificing is – English values; here the shift is to art as the point of the sacrifice. Art is all that matters. Compare the film with Norma Desmonds closing line in Sunset Blvd.

Art all that matters: Sunset Blvd. Line “You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!... All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up”

On the surface, the film deals with the struggle between one’s personal life and the demands of art on the artist. Vicky’s trajectory moves her from an amateur performer to a princess in a fairy tale, to a robotic doll with no way out. (Compare this with Hoffmann later). To some degree the film deals with control (much like Caligari and other characters like Svengali with Trilby)

The film moves between two worlds. It has been said that the narrative parts of the film have a fantasy realism about them, whereas the ballet sequences are realistic fantasy

WATCHING In the opening shots, the very real world of the students trying to get into the theater are juxtaposed with the very different world - we see of Masssine peeping out though the peep hole in the curtain (again – watching and looking motif) something akin to a Hoffmann character in his stories

These two worlds allow for some indications of border crossing possibilities which the duo seem interested in. There is a distinct shift in the film which first indicates the two worlds by showing the students in the mundane world of Covet Garden and then the quick shot of Massine in the artistic world of the ballet and then the more dramatic shift once Julian and Vicky are taken up into that world. Similarly Vicky’s approach to the “production meeting” which takes her up the stairs to see Lermontov are indications of the border crossings.

TRANSITIONS:Entry into a new world Julian and Vicky enter the world of the professional theater

INTERNATIONAL COMPANY _ CROSS CULTURAL FRIENDSHIPS

DOUBLES: Like Ruth and Clodagh, Vicky and the girl in the ballet are doubles.

What similarities are there between Vicky and Sister Ruth

How do they relate to the concept of female hysteria? In Black Narcissus it is Dean who is the immediate cause of Ruth’s hysteria; in Red Shoes, it is being torn between Lermontov and Julian – career and home – again raises the problem of women after the war although performers have traditionally been more accepting of women than many other professions.

Untenible situation, can’t work doesn’t want to return home.

Equation of art with mysticism, magic etc.

Note similarity in their endings.

Creative Artist (Julian) vs. Interpretive artist (Vicky)

She has to be there for her work to occur, he does not.

The story, like many of Andersen’s tales has a heavy erotic component which is certainly Freudian analysts can have a field day with.

THE FILM TECHNIQUES

These are typical Powell camera movement, combined with a battery of special effects. The film’s diversion from “realism” again upset some critics as did some of the violence (the ending for example).

The initial sequence at the ballet with the phonograph at the Mercury Theater begins to show some of the dancer’s perspectives with the “swish pans” reflecting Vicky’s perception.

Clearly The Red Shoes Ballet is a “film ballet” not a real one. Most of the things which occur in the sequence could not happen on stage. Notice that other than in the Mercury Theater, we never se an audience.

Not only does the set design reflect the “subjectiveness” of the sequence, but so does Powell’s use of the camera in terms of over and undercranking. Some of the dance steps are slowed down and some sped up.

The film’s attempts to see the ballet sequences as envisioned emotionally by Vicky in a kind of Freudian nightmare not unlike the ones that first appear in Contraband (the blackout), Black Narcissus (a “red out”) and will occur in films like Small Back Room which parallel those in Spellbound, Lost Week-end and so on. These are very expressionistic pieces but others appear throughout the film. The scene when people are congratulating the dancer on her engagement contrastd with the dark room and dark glasses Lermontov is involved with alone in the office.

The film is also a further development of Powell’s “composed film” in which there is an integration of sound and image with sound almost being primacy perhaps because music is more abstract that the visual images. Notice Crasner’s line about what the audience will SEE when they HEAR the ball room scene. This is a kind of synesthesia (See Scriaben) where auditory inputs evoke visual images.

Notice for example the complex way in which words and music interact in the scenes where Julian plays the piano and talks along with other characters in the film.