Why do you want to dance?

My girlfriend Jen H. and I went to the Film Forum last night to see The Red Shoes, a ballet film from 1948 that tells the story of Vicky Page, an unbelievably gorgeous ballerina who rises to fame under a brutal but queeny ballet director named Boris Lermontov. Her first starring role is in a new ballet based on the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale about death inducing maniacal red slippers, The Red Shoes, with music composed by an idealist young composer named Julian. The ballet is a story within a story, and the choreography and set design of the ballet production within the film is breathtaking, especially with the recent technicolor restoration.

When the company travels to Monte Carlo to prepare for their new season, Vicky and Julian inevitably fall in love, with the help of carriage rides along the Mediterranean and stolen chats on moonlit verandas. Lermontov sees their relationship as a threat to the company's stability and success. He fires Julian, who promptly leaves the company. Vicky follows, the couple weds, and Julian begins work on his first opera.

Domestic bliss doesn't last long however, and Vicky is drawn back to dance and Lermontov. She agrees to reprise her role in The Red Shoes in its Monaco premiere, coincidentally on opening night of Julian's opera. Julian surprises everyone by showing up at the theater to take Vicky home with him, and there is a dramatic showdown in her dressing room moments before the show's curtain. Lermontov convinces her to forsake her love and devote the rest of her life to dance, starting with the night's performance. Julian leaves for the train station, heartbroken.

Instead of taking the stage, Vicky is so overwrought that she throws herself off the theater's balcony onto some train tracks. In her last dying breaths, she begs Julian to cut the cursed red toe shoes off her, but the show must go on and the company performs The Red Shoes without her as a tribute. SWOON!

I loved the movie SO MUCH and felt like an 6 year old sitting wide eyed in the theater. The costumes, the dancing, the overacted theatrics, its a masterpiece.