The Red Shoes

Arguably the greatest dance film ever, Powell and Pressburger's seminal study of the relationship between life and art has at last been restored to its full Technicolor glory.Inspired both by Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale and by the impresario Diaghilev, the film charts the rise to fame of ballerina Vicky Page (Shearer); when she's 'discovered' by the perfectionist Boris Lermontov (Walbrook), his insistence that her dancing take priority antagonises her composer boyfriend (Goring). Thanks to the creative input of dance-world stars such as Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine and Ludmilla Tchérina, the movie rings magnificently true even as it steadily turns into a delirious parable, its expressionist contours brilliantly mapped out by Jack Cardiff's camerawork and Hein Heckroth's production design. And the climactic Red Shoes ballet sequence, with Brian Easdale's score scaling the heights of tormented passion, remains extraordinary.- Geoff Andrew