The Red Shoes (1948) *****

Passion, desire, art, heartbreak, tragedy. All these are portrayed with utmost craft in The Red Shoes (1948), one of my Top 100 Films. Via lush Technicolor—where every frame could be a painting—and an opulent score, The Red Shoes captures the devastatingly beautiful Moira Shearer (in a stunning screen debut) and her captivating dance. The film is well-known and highly regarded for its breathtaking, hallucinatory, impressionistic extended dance sequence. The film features some of the most gorgeous cinematography, costumes, and production design ever put to celluloid (and The Criterion Collection's 4K UHD is truly something to behold). It says as much with words as it does by their absence. Like the best fairy tales, it deftly explores both the light and the dark—the heights of ecstasy and the terror of existence. The power of this seminal masterpiece simply cannot be denied.