The Beauty of the Black Narcissus

The Red Shoes is a 1948 British dance drama film written, produced and directed by the duo of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It follows Victoria Page (Moira Shearer), an aspiring ballerina who joins the world-renowned Ballet Lermontov, owned and operated by Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), who tests her dedication to ballet by making her choose between her career and her romance with composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring). It marked the feature film debut of Shearer, an established ballerina, and also features Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine, and Ludmilla Tchérina, other renowned dancers from the ballet world. The metafictional plot is based on the 1845 fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen, and features a ballet within it by the same title, also adapted from the Andersen work. The Red Shoes was filmmaking team Powell and Pressburger's tenth collaboration and follow-up to 1947's Black Narcissus. It had been conceived by Powell and producer Alexander Korda in the 1930s, from whom the duo purchased the rights in 1946. Most of the cast were professional dancers. Filming of The Red Shoes took place in mid-1946, primarily in France and England.