Happy 2018! - took a few weeks to get to this - I sorta went down a rabbit hole with the Antoine Doinel movies - (#185-188) but we'll get to those...probably in a few years - LOL
The Red Shoes is one I've never heard of - a nice little colorized movie a couple years after WWII following a ballet dancer who is doing a production of a Hans Christen Andersen story about - wait for it - The Red Shoes.
Watching this movie, I was reminded of a very contemporary film - Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons in Whiplash - this film has the protege and the teacher and both stories have something to say about the price of art - especially excellence and what it does to a person's soul, their relationships, and the student/teacher dynamic. Both movies are cautionary tales about not sucking so much marrow out of art you lose what gives life meaning.
This MAY be the first film even closely resembling Ballet and the backstage life that I've ever seen. I'm sure there are some characters here who will be familiar to most backstage folks - it's an international cast, and takes place a big chunk down in the South of France. The visuals and music are excellent, and the middle of the movie is punctuated by a central performance of the title ballet, with some excellent camera effects and stretching of the boundary between camera and stage as sometimes you are with the audience watching the stage and other times you are the world they are trying to manufacture.
This would be worth a second viewing with the commentary track, and while I only had one special feature on Filmstruck, it involved the restoration process, which if you've read this blog, you know is one of those things I really like. The oddness of this one, involving three separate negatives, has to be seen to be appreciated - This restoration in particular came out fantastic.
Great Movie - a combination of a musical, a dance ballet, and drama - but with some sad foreshadowing of the story to come.
