My Black Friday sale is live! 20% off every item. Prints, tote bags, magnets, and original art available at my Etsy shop. My painting of Françoise Hardy, Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes, and Nastassja Kinski in Paris, Texas
The Fairytale of the Red Shoes is the story of a girl whose favorite and idolized red shoes are cursed one Sunday morning to never come off when she dances. She is unable to stop dancing, and is cursed once more by an angel to dance even after she dies for her narcissism as a warning to children. She has her feet cut off, but even in the shoes they continue to dance, and their dancing bars her from entering church. Desperate for the horrors to stop, she prays to the angel, who accepts her plea. She is so joyful that her heart explodes and she dies.
The fairytale was adapted in the 1948 British Feature Film ’The Red Shoes,’ which follows the ballerina Victoria Page through her dancing, a romance abandoned in favor of dancing and to her death off a balcony, which is left ambiguous as either suicide or caused by the famous red ballet shoes she wears.
THREE MEANINGS OF THE RED SHOES IN PACIFIC RIM – & A FOURTH UNSUSPECTED
the first & oldest is the dance of the doomed orphan who wished to be a princess in all its versions from the first grim moralizing fairy-tale (x) to the movie made a century later about a ballet about the story (x)
to the 1993 music video (x) on the same theme which ties it to the Crossroads Bargain legend (& the Tempter is as always the Self the enemy in the mirror)
the second & most obvious is the sign of the witch victrix
which may or not be derived from the first consciously or subconsciously but which became associated in 2006
the third is something you can onlysee if you know old Japanese children’s songs at all – but it is not at all unimportant (x) & this is a fixfic or a happy AU of “Akai Kutsu” (which may itself be a legend or true or partly true) yes it matters that he speaks her language
& the fourth if you watched the first Japanese kaiju movie not directed by one of the two artists this movie was dedicated to
& here is the oracular connection made plain & how the turtle & the turtledove became one & no longer the nemesis of the phoenix & how Atlantis got into the story & why the impetuous boy photographer must also show respect for The Lady he admires & why it is a (p)rebuttal to MAN OF STEEL bc the foolish fanboy who dismissed the Tokyo sequence as a ripoff of GAMERA 3: REVENGE OF IRIS was on to something even if he had no idea why bc the evolution of the modern myths is entangled w the old stories
but in the G3 reboot trilogy finale we see what wld really happen if an all-powerful planetary guardian takes no care whatsoever for the individuals supposedly being protected in the course of battling the ancient foes of earth the remaining survivors of “friendly smash” may not appreciate the fanboy philosophy of eggs & omelettes & “the few” outweighed
G3 is what wld happen in BATMAN VS SUPERMAN if the elder Waynes were killed in the battle with Zod & their child joined forces w Lex Luthor to find other alien superbeings in hiding to take revenge on Kal-el & end him bc the cure = the disease
& so the world ends in multiple bangs as the ancient feud between the rival Guardians of the Four Directions leaves the planet open to invasion as the retconned Guardian of the North realizes too late that individual human lives mattertoo
(there is more of course - lighthouse symbolism & apocalyptic cults & environmental catastrophe leading to the decline of the fisheries & the archetypal eccentric paleontologist & the boy who thinks the monster will be his friend while the rest of the world puts aside its Cold War rivalries to fight it - but the imagery of the first 1965 GAMERA (x)
of the young and dedicated research assistant handing the ancient Inuit prophecy stone that was entrusted to her care back over to her wise & kind & ever-courteous mentor is mirrored here – & so too this
& so the circle is made complete on yet another level as rivals & opponents & nemeses are reconciled all the fixfics ever
Details from “The Red Shoes Ballet. A Critical Study”, first edition (Saturn Press, 1948), presented by Powell and Pressburger.
This is a study of the famous film “The Red Shoes” made in 1948 by the successful duo Powell and Pressburger. The film was born out of a Pressburger script commissioned by Alexander Korda for his wife Merle Oberon to star in the main role with her dancing performed by a double. The duo then bought the script back from Korda and made an extraordinary tale of romance and artistic obsession using real ballet stars alongside actors of the day.
Moira Shearer, Leonide Massine, Robert Helpmann and Ludmilla Teherina from the world of ballet joined Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring and Esmond Knight to make a memorable film.
This book is a presentation copy inscribed by both Powell and Pressburger on the half-title page: “February 26 1949. To Kai Berg Madsen, it’s a matter of life and death. Michael Powell”, and “To Kai Berg Madsen from Emeric Pressburger.”
The reference to “a matter of life and death” relates to an earlier Powell and Pressburger film of that name, made in 1946. It, too, was an enormous success. It starred David Niven, Kim Hunter, Roger Livesey, Raymond Massey, Richard Attenborough and (again) Marius Goring. It was called “Stairway to Heaven” in the United States.
“The best of them won’t come for money. They’ll come for me”
David Lean’s grandiose sense of cinematic scale is an asset rarely seen in modern filmmaking, and seeing the towering achievement of Lawrence of Arabia for the first time at the London Film Festival (the new 4K restoration) is only making this fact harder to swallow. So, as this wonderful film turns fifty, now seems the perfect time to reflect on what must be the most extraordinary spectacle the cinema has ever produced, and celebrate the seemingly lost art of “big cinema”.
There aren’t many films as perfectly formed as David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. It’s one of a select few - like Citizen Kane, Vertigo, Fitzcarraldo or Apocalypse Now - in which everything seems to align perfectly with a director’s vision, no matter the cost. In the case of this film, the director’s vision is one of extraordinary scale, boldness and ambition. Take the dramatic entrance of Omar Sharif’s Ali, for instance, which sees him appear on the distant horizon as if riding in from the sky. To capture this startlingly beautiful image, cinematographer Freddie Young had to use a 482mm lens designed especially for the shot - a lens that has not been used since.
This is one of a number of hints at Lean’s towering ambition for this bold film. The film was undeniably a large undertaking, but Lean had both the vision and the control to match the scale of the surroundings - surroundings in which he immersed himself, shooting mostly on location in Jordan and Morocco, with southern Spain doubling as desert for some scenes. As a result, the film looks gorgeous. Freddie Young’s spectacular cinematography captures the expansive vistas of Arabia, the chaotic battle sequences and the expression-filled face (and eyes) of Peter O'Toole as Lawrence with such simple majesty.
Of course, it helps when you have a cast as attractive as that of Lawrence of Arabia. The likes of O'Toole, Sharif, Alec Guinness and Anthony Quinn deliver knock-out performances - particularly O'Toole, whose portrayal of T.E. Lawrence was not only his breakthrough role but the finest he has ever been on screen. He makes for a captivating screen presence, bringing the complex character of T.E. Lawrence to life in the most charismatic of ways.
Another breakthrough role was that of composer Maurice Jarre, whose only previous experience had been scoring two films with Georges Franju, Head Against The Wall (1958) and Eyes Without A Face (1959), in his native France. When producer Sam Spiegel approached him to work on Lawrence of Arabia - he was the third choice composer - he had a mere six weeks to score the whole film. The finished result, a powerful score echoing the tumultuous life of T.E. Lawrence as well as the scale of the scenery, won him his first of three Oscars, all of which were for films by David Lean (Doctor Zhivago in 1965 and Ryan’s Daughter in 1970).
Lean’s film was also a launch pad for its editor, Anne V. Coates, whose only experience beforehand was an uncredited second editor role on the Powell and Pressburger film, The Red Shoes (1948), as well as a few assistant roles on small British films. Her virtuosic sense for cuts - particularly the “match cut” sequence, which is surely one of the most impressive jump cuts in film - and pacing won her a deserved Oscar.
All of these individual elements help to make Lawrence of Arabia as great an audio-visual treat as you’re ever likely to see on screen, but it’s in the characterisation of Lawrence that the majority of the film’s criticisms lie. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote of the film: “It is such a laboriously large conveyance of eye-filling outdoor spectacle that the possibly human T. E. Lawrence is lost in it. We know little more about this strange man when it is over than we did when it begins”, while Andrew Sarris of Village Voice labelled Lawrence of Arabia: “coldly impersonal”.
While these criticisms are relatively valid, and it is true that the film does not work particularly well as a detailed character study, this is only because it is not what Lean set out to do. He’s not trying to document the man, he’s trying to capture Lawrence’s spectacular achievements cinematically. This isn’t to say Lawrence is ignored as a character, as O'Toole imbues him with an almost effeminate aura, and a charm as great as his arrogance, but Lean is more interested in the drama than the facts - and who can blame him, he’s not a documentarian, after all.
But as Sarris suggests, one thing Lean’s film is not is a “Kane approach to the mystery of the hero”, but only because it doesn’t try to be. Lawrence of Arabia doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a celebration of Lawrence’s achievements, and the disregard of factual accuracy in the screenplay serves to offer a romanticised depiction of Lawrence and his achievements rather than an accurate retelling of his life.
Ultimately, these complaints are largely confined to a small number of critics and historians. The wider belief (including my own) is that Lawrence of Arabia is a searing indication of David Lean’s talent and ambition as well as an extraordinarily bold feat of filmmaking, the scale of which will probably never be seen again.
It’s a film that perfectly captures the magic of cinema and, as such, deserves to be seen on as big a screen as possible.
