*Spoiler Warning

Created by the legendary film directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948’s “The Red Shoes” is more than just a film about ballet. The film examines and deconstructs the battle between artistic expression and the obsession with achieving true art and beauty. One of the most memorable lines from the film is, “Don’t forget, a great impression of simplicity can only be achieved by great agony of body and spirit.” 

The film is a visual cinematic masterpiece that has been given the title of one of the best British films of all time. It has been especially praised for being able to capture the rhythm and fluidity of ballet, which has been notoriously known for being difficult to come across on screen. 

Based on the Hans Christian Anderson 1845 fairy tale “The Red Shoes”,  the film follows Victoria Page, played by Moira Shearer (an actual ballerina in real life) whose dedication to the art of ballet is tested by her teacher Lermontov, played by Anton Wallbrook, who makes her choose between her love life or her career and role in the ballet “The Red Shoes”. 

The brilliance of the film is only elevated by the multitude of artists that were used in the making of the film. Numerous ballet dancers were cast from the Royal Ballet Company, along with established masters of ballet. Such as Australian ballet dancer Robert Helpmann, and Russian choreographer Léonide Massine.

Watching the film is like viewing a surrealist fairytale come to life, which is in part thanks to the film’s vivid and saturated aesthetic due to the use of technicolor. Technicolor uses the “Three Strip Process”, where a technicolor camera uses three strips that are separated into red, blue, and green that reunite together creating a spectrum of vivid luminous colors. 

While technicolor itself was not new at the time of the film’s release, the film takes technicolor to new extremes that gives the film its dramatic and unreal cinematography that opened up doors to the possibilities of technicolor in the future. 

Because of the film’s brilliant use of technicolor, the numerous teams behind the film’s choreography, music, and set design, all had to adapt to the dark but vibrant fantastical tone of the film.  

One of the prominent features that only elevates the surrealness of the film is the costumes. 

The costumes of the film were a collaboration between Hein Heckroth, a painter who also was the film’s set designer and art director, and French courtier Jacques Fath, whose Paris couture house was considered to be one of the few dominant French fashion houses post WWII. 

Both costume designers agreed that Heckrtoh would create the costumes for the 17-minute ballet scene, while Fath would produce Moria’s on-screen wardrobe. 

While both accomplished creating a series of costumes that only elevate the film’s visual aesthetic, I want to personally focus on a series of dresses that Heckroth created for the 17-minute ballet scene that not only serve as the visual transformation of the character but also serve as a metaphor to the film’s central meaning and foreshadows the films tragic ending. 

The ballet sequence is often cited as the pinnacle or centerpiece of the film’s artistic mastery. Even if you have little to no interest in ballet itself, the sequence will entice any viewer into its surreal and impressionistic world. 

During the scene, Moira Shearer (Victoria) is performing the unnamed main character in the ballet “The Red Shoes”, in which, just like the Hans Chrisitan Anderson fairy tale, whose desire to dance is obstructed by her mother and falls victim to an evil and corrupted shoe-maker who gives her a pair of red shoes. However, once she puts the red shoes on she is unable to take them off, forever stuck dancing leading to her eventual obscurity and death. 

While I don’t want to spoil the film, the ballet and the ballet’s end will draw several parallels to Victoria that become very apparent as the film progresses. 

Heckroth designed over 200 different costumes for the sequence for more than 100 different extras. However the two dresses in the sequence that Victoria wears before putting on the red shoes and after, clearly demonstrates Heckroth’s mastery of using clothing as symbolism. 

The first dress is a champagne pink tulle dress that is supported by a very thin and transparent lace petticoat. The boned bodice of the dress is pleated with baby blue ribbons around the neckline along with tulle embellishments. This choice of color, a light almost nude shade of pink along with hints of blue perfectly coincides with Moira’s alabaster freckled White skin. 

The dress follows the basics of contemporary ballet ensembles of the time; allowing the dancer to move fluidly while not being restricted to any pieces of clothing.  

The dress is a perfect symbolic representation of the innocence Victoria and her character embodies prior to putting the red shoes on. The classical “girly-ness” due to the use of pink and baby blue of the dress adds to this aura of adolescence, which perfectly correlates to the character’s nativity about the sinister trick that is about to be inflicted on her by the shoemaker. 

The second dress that Victoria wears, is the follow-up dress that she wears after putting the red shoes on. Once Victoria’s character puts on the shoes, she is no longer restricted by her mother and has transformed into the dancer she has always wanted to be. This dress from this point on, is the dress she will wear the most throughout the 17-minute sequence.  The second dress in contrast to the first, is starkly different with less detail and color.

The dress is of milk-white chiffon and tulle, less transparent, and has a slightly longer hemline. The milk-white color of the dress greatly brings attention to not only Moria’s natural red hair but the red shoes themselves, emphasizing how she has embodied and become “one” with the shoes.  

The dress could symbolize not only the transformation of Moria’s character into a dancer but also as a woman. In the second half of the sequence, Moria’s character forgets her childhood love interest and dances with a series of men at a carnival that may be a metaphor for her having casual sex. 

The white color of the dress interestingly plays a double meaning. Moria’s character is innocent, since she is a victim of the shoemaker’s cruel trickery, hence the color white. 

However, the white color, which we commonly associate with innocence, is not only at odds with the red shoes she wears but also her actions that seem to be the direct result of wearing the red shoes, which granted her a sense of liberation from her mother’s disapproval. The white dress serves to reflect Moria’s character as being “reborn”. 

These two dresses serve to us as audiences a clear shift in the ballet sequence tone, transitioning from clear adolescence into corruption in part by the shoemaker’s trick and her own carnal desire to dance.  

Heckroth’s subtle decisions in the costume design further elevate the numerous tones and messages in the 17-minute ballet sequence. Costumes play not only just a decorative visual element of the film, but also serve as an important factor in developing a character as a whole.