Short Take: The Red Shoes

One may not immediately think of The Red Shoes, written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, as a film musical. There's no singing, and only one extended dance sequence. But it's hard to think of another picture that's had a bigger impact on the genre. It's also a great film regardless of categories. The story begins with a London ballet impresario (Anton Walbrook) hiring two up-and-coming talents for his company: a ballerina (Moira Shearer), and a composer/conductor (Marius Goring). He makes both of them stars with the company's treatment of the Hans Christian Andersen story "The Red Shoes," but they fall in love, and neither can maintain the obsessive, perfectionist focus he demands. Powell and Pressburger take a viewer right to the heart of artistic dedication veering into monomania, and the wrenching conflicts between professional ambition and the need for a fulfilling personal life. The film is also a compelling tribute to the ballet art form and the world of professional dance. The centerpiece, an 18-minute scene featuring the debut performance of "The Red Shoes" ballet, is among the finest production numbers in movie history. It's a poetic treatment of the film's themes, the imagery is hallucinatory, and it is breathtakingly danced by Shearer and the other performers. Shearer also handles herself well in the dramatic scenes, and she even holds her own with Walbrook, whose performance is a masterfully rendered portrait of ambitious determination and enigmatic self-containment. Every aspect of the production--including Jack Cardiff's color cinematography, Hein Heckroth and Arthur Lawson's sets, and Brian Easdale's score--is gorgeous. Robert Helpmann, who plays the ballet company's dance director, choreographed "The Red Shoes" dance sequence, and is featured as its boyfriend character. The screenplay is based on an unproduced script by Pressburger about the relationship between ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev and dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

Short Take: Unfaithfully Yours

The 1948 film Unfaithfully Yours, written and directed by Preston Sturges, is a delightful slapstick comedy. Sturges' screenplay is ingenious. An egotistical, world-famous conductor (Rex Harrison) suspects that his beautiful young wife (Linda Darnell) is having an affair with his social secretary (Kurt Kreuger). He takes the stage to conduct selections from Rossini, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky, and imagines how he will handle the situation afterward. His fantasies are in tune with the music. The Rossini piece inspires a blackly farcical revenge plot in which he frames the secretary for his wife's murder. The melancholy passage by Wagner has him behaving with the utmost magnanimity. The Tchaikovsky music prompts a duel scenario in which he demonstrates his superiority to his wife and the secretary in both courage and honor. After the concert ends, he tries to act out his fantasies, and bungles his efforts at all three. Preston Sturges directs with timing so perfect it crackles, and Rex Harrison matches him every step of the way. The post-concert scene of the conductor haplessly wrecking his apartment is one of the great movie gag sequences. The comic high point is probably his bewilderment at trying to operate an allegedly easy-to-use home recording device. There are also some great incidental bits, such as a harpist doing her nails at rehearsal, and a percussionist going for broke with bigger and better cymbals. The good parts of the film are so strong that its flaws--the padded first act; the miscasting of the bland Kurt Kreuger as the secretary; Lionel Stander's annoying faux-Russian accent as the conductor's manager--are all but completely out of mind by the film's end. The cast also includes Rudy Vallee as the conductor's insufferable brother-in-law, Barbara Lawrence as the wife's sister, and Edgar Kennedy as a music-loving private detective.