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But the red shoes dance on
Yesterday worked. Having made the decision to go for our crazy day-trip at nine in the morning, Eric picked me up about an hour later and we made it to New York City with forty-five minutes to spare, successfully surmounting an unexpected detour for automotive repair in Connecticut—the heat shield came most of the way off the exhaust pipe on Eric's Civic at just about the one-hour mark; the mechanic at the Midas in Vernon fixed it for free and told us not to miss our movie—a complete traffic jam while waiting to get on the George Washington Bridge, and the fact that I had slept barely three hours the previous night. (I dozed through most of the rest of Connecticut, in the kind of weird shallow sleep where your dreams are more like hallucinations of things heard and seen through your closed eyes. The bit of rubber that flew off the truck in front of us and bounced off our windshield turned out to be real.) We had first complete parking fail and then a stroke of parking luck, in front of an old record store on Carmine Street; and at 3:45 PM, in a very nicely crowded theater at the Film Forum, we saw the restored print of Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes (1948) for Eric's first time and my first on a big screen. It was gorgeous. I do not remember thinking the Criterion transfer especially scratchy or faded when I watched it on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nineweaving's old computer in 2007, but this version was gloriously, almost hectically luminous. The lighting makes Moira Shearer's hair a mane of fire. The shoes themselves all but bleed off the screen. As for the film on second viewing, I still have very little sympathy for Julian; I noted that this time I read Lermontov as in love with Victoria. Sexually, aesthetically, I don't know and I don't know that it matters; what is important is that he is willing to break his rule for her, that "a dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love will never be a great dancer—never," forgetting that his other credo is not to change human nature, but to ignore it: including in himself, with fatal results all round. "He has no heart, that man," the dramatic Boronskaja declares. It's not true, or we wouldn't hear his breaking in his voice at the announcement of Vicky's death, but he doesn't seem to know they how work. I think he is, unlike Julian, capable of seeing Vicky as a person. He is violently offended by the idea of a husband who expects her to sacrifice her art to his complacency; whatever he projects or mistakes, he is aware that she has needs and desires of her own. But he fails utterly to understand that needs and desires can conflict; that he is not a disinterested party; that however misplaced we or he may consider it, Vicky's love for Julian is as valid as her love of dance. The two are not separable for Lermontov: precisely because dance is to her as much as an imperative as heartbeat or breath, he loves her. And so he falls prey to his own maxims; the impresario's ambitions are mixed with the doubtful comforts of human love and what comes of it is the Ballet of the Red Shoes for real. And fighting with Julian across her weeping body looks like a presentiment of The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), Coppélius on one side and Spalanzani on the other, tearing Olympia apart. Afterward we walked to Rivington Street for dinner at 'inoteca, which included pumpkin-and-thyme supplì and a ridiculously delicious salad of calamari with apple and celery root, and we drove back under what turned out to be the last of the Leonid shower, which I mistook for my own tiredness making stars glitter and blur. Even if this print comes to Boston, which I am hoping it does, I will not be sorry we drove to New York for it. I needed a day like this. It was definitely a good thing.
nineweaving's old computer in 2007, but this version was gloriously, almost hectically luminous. The lighting makes Moira Shearer's hair a mane of fire. The shoes themselves all but bleed off the screen. As for the film on second viewing, I still have very little sympathy for Julian; I noted that this time I read Lermontov as in love with Victoria. Sexually, aesthetically, I don't know and I don't know that it matters; what is important is that he is willing to break his rule for her, that "a dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love will never be a great dancer—never," forgetting that his other credo is not to change human nature, but to ignore it: including in himself, with fatal results all round. "He has no heart, that man," the dramatic Boronskaja declares. It's not true, or we wouldn't hear his breaking in his voice at the announcement of Vicky's death, but he doesn't seem to know they how work. I think he is, unlike Julian, capable of seeing Vicky as a person. He is violently offended by the idea of a husband who expects her to sacrifice her art to his complacency; whatever he projects or mistakes, he is aware that she has needs and desires of her own. But he fails utterly to understand that needs and desires can conflict; that he is not a disinterested party; that however misplaced we or he may consider it, Vicky's love for Julian is as valid as her love of dance. The two are not separable for Lermontov: precisely because dance is to her as much as an imperative as heartbeat or breath, he loves her. And so he falls prey to his own maxims; the impresario's ambitions are mixed with the doubtful comforts of human love and what comes of it is the Ballet of the Red Shoes for real. And fighting with Julian across her weeping body looks like a presentiment of The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), Coppélius on one side and Spalanzani on the other, tearing Olympia apart. Afterward we walked to Rivington Street for dinner at 'inoteca, which included pumpkin-and-thyme supplì and a ridiculously delicious salad of calamari with apple and celery root, and we drove back under what turned out to be the last of the Leonid shower, which I mistook for my own tiredness making stars glitter and blur. Even if this print comes to Boston, which I am hoping it does, I will not be sorry we drove to New York for it. I needed a day like this. It was definitely a good thing.
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he fails utterly to understand ... that he is not a disinterested party (many people fail in this regard...)
we drove back under what turned out to be the last of the Leonid shower (wonderful!)
It does sound like a good thing, a very good thing.
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If you have not seen The Red Shoes, I recommend it to you. A Canterbury Tale is my favorite of all the Archers' films, but most of them are strange and beautiful and this one is no exception.
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Let me know what you think!
(And I'm very glad about The Signal-Man!)
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So were we!
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I find that to be a miracle in itself... when I was there 2 years ago, I was boggled by how crowded it was.
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Seriously. Especially since we had previously found a parking place right behind the theater, but had to give it up because the meter wouldn't cover the movie. The parking gods were with us.
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Whatever, I'm not giving it back.
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Why a crowd scene in particular?
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All right; that's an excellent reason.
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Nine
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Not at the time, but I'm totally not surprised. I liked that film so much more than I had expected to.
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I hope you like them all. They are rich and strange.
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I was so glad of that. Most artists die before they're rediscovered; and especially after Peeping Tom.
(Another piece here.)
(Thanks!)
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A pleasure.
As was watching A Canterbury Tale for the first time this very night. I am full of delighted awe, and have already written of it. I wanted to see the film and write down my first impressions before reading your own essays on the film; I look forward even more now to reading those in the days to come. I hope you like my little essay, and would welcome your thoughts; it turned out better than I had hoped. The funny thing was that just an hour or two before reading yours and Eric's stories of your NYC trip to see The Red Shoes, I had almost watched A Canterbury Tale, but chose something more familiar instead. The time was almost right, but not quite; I'm glad I waited, and had the benefit of our exchanges, because it made me more alert, and I'm happy to say my heightened expectations were more than fully met.
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I really need to see The Red Shoes again; I was very very young when I saw it and mostly remember my sister's reaction and vaguely the play she constructed afterward, which I took part in and wonder now if I played Julian or Lermontov; all I remember is my sister needing red shoes.
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It was good!
I was very very young when I saw it and mostly remember my sister's reaction and vaguely the play she constructed afterward, which I took part in and wonder now if I played Julian or Lermontov; all I remember is my sister needing red shoes.
That's wonderful. I think Powell and Pressburger would be pleased to know they became childhood folklore.