Target #273: The Red Shoes (1948, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)

TSPDT placing: #128

Directed by: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Written by: Hans Christian Andersen (fairy-tale), Emeric Pressburger (original screenplay, written by), Michael Powell (written by), Keith Winter (additional dialogue)

Starring: Marius Goring, Anton Walbrook, Moira Shearer, Austin Trevor, Albert Bassermann, Ludmilla Tchérina

WARNING: Plot and/or ending details may follow!!! [Paragraph 2 only]

Aside from a few compulsory school-related occasions upon which I look back with the utmost antipathy, I've never danced in my life. I've never wanted to, and I plan to hold firm at least until the day of my wedding. As late as last year, I regarded ballet as among the least interesting forms of dance, my assertion based not on experience, but mere conjecture. Then I saw Norman McLaren's extraordinary short film Pas de deux (1968), in which an optical printer is used to demonstrate how the dancers' movements transcend space and time, the majesty of human motion revealed in every gentle, graceful spin. Suddenly, inexplicably, I saw beauty where I'd never seen it before. I consider The Red Shoes (1948) the affirmation of this revelation. The child of writing/directing team Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, under the banner of The Archers, the film showcases the pair's talent for imbuing their work with lush colours, warmth and personality, displaying a faculty for capturing atmosphere that is unmatched then or since.

The Red Shoes revolves around the production of a stage adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's eponymous fairy-tale, in which a ballet dancer receives a pair of cursed red shoes that keep her dancing until the day she dies. However, rather than being a simple story of success in show- business, the behind-the-scenes events are themselves a loose variation on Andersen's fairy-tale. When asked what she wants from life, young British ballerina Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) replies, "I want to dance." Just as Mephisto offered Faust everything he wanted at the cost of everything he held dear, Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook, of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)) offers Victoria immortality in the art of ballet, but at the expense of life, love and happiness. Finally, torn between her two great loves – to her husband Julian (Marius Goring), and to ballet – she chooses to abandon both, throwing herself in front of a train as though compelled to do so by the red dancing shoes that had so overwhelmingly commanded her life.

As in most Powell/Pressburger collaborations, it's not adequate to merely praise the co-directors. Hein Heckroth's costumes, Arthur Lawson's art direction, Jack Cardiff's lush cinematography, Brian Easdale's musical score; all are utterly masterful, the fruits of a alliance in which every crew member understood perfectly what was required of them. The film's incredible centrepiece is a twenty- minute balletic interlude in which the audience is shown the stage production itself, perhaps the most breathtaking and purely cinematic musical sequence I've ever seen. As Victoria Page is swept up in the fantasy of her role, she is inundated by surreal visions of Faustian tragedy and horror that deliberately recall F.W. Murnau's 1926 film. In Hollywood, The Red Shoes proved hugely influential, noticeably inspiring the likes of Stanley Donen and Vincente Minnelli: An American in Paris (1951) featured a similar, if not so comfortably integrated, ballet interlude, and The Band Wagon (1953) feels like a sunny feature-length rebuttal to the tragedy inherent in The Archers' film.

8/10

Currently my #5 film of 1948:

1) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston)
2) Ladri di biciclette {The Bicycle Thief} (Vittorio De Sicae)
3) Rope (Alfred Hitchcock)
4) Oliver Twist (David Lean)
5) The Red Shoes (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)
6) Macbeth (Orson Welles)
7) Key Largo (John Huston)
8) Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls)
9) Secret Beyond the Door… (Fritz Lang)
10) Musik i mörker {Music in Darkness} (Ingmar Bergman)

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Target #238: Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948, Max Ophüls)

TSPDT placing: #74

Directed by: Max Ophüls

Written by: Stefan Zweig (story), Howard Koch (screenplay), Max Ophüls (uncredited)

Starring: Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan, Mady Christians, Marcel Journet, Howard Freeman

WARNING: Plot and/or ending details may follow!!!

Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) signals a tragedy from its earliest moments. The film's carefully-constructed narrative structure, with the entire story unfolding through flashbacks narrated by a dying woman's final letter, prematurely reveals a romance doomed from the outset. Whatever meetings take place, whatever promises are made, whatever hope is afforded us, we are always fully exposed to the knowledge that misfortune is only just around the corner. As such, a blanket of melancholy has descended upon every scene in the film, and all emotions seem stifled and distant; not through any fault of the filmmakers, but rather through the audiences' individual empathy for the heroine's ill-fated affection, towards a charming womaniser who can't even recall her name. This was undoubtedly the tone for which director Max Ophüls was striving; if you're looking for an uplifting romance to conclude a bright and happy day, this isn't it. However, there's a certain sedateness that the film struggles to overcome, the hollow feeling of a story not going anywhere, a train having already arrived at its destination.

Not surprisingly, given the director's nationality, Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) has the feel of a European film. It's a bit difficult to put my finger on exactly why this is, but the Viennese setting probably contributed. Additionally, American romances – both of that time, and today – usually seem so anxious to please, doling out hope with every new meeting, and typically ending with the heroine carried off into the sunset in her eternal lover's arms. It's for its acknowledgement of the hopelessness of love that Ophüls' film, and others such as Lean's British-made Brief Encounter (1945), are regarded above most romantic pictures; after all, is there any love more poignant and memorable than unrequited love? Joan Fontaine, a favourite actress of mine, is as delicate as a flower, a quality that Hitchcock notably exploited twice in both Rebecca (1940) and Suspicion (1941). Her love for the dashing French pianist Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan) is so incredibly passive that you already know that she's going to lose him.

Throughout the film, Lisa Berndle watches her lover from afar; she listens to his music through the physical barrier of a door; she quickly comes to know him, but only later comes to meet him. Fontaine's character is simply too weak to succeed in love, and only in her dying moments does she realise that her strength of will was required to bridge the gap between herself and the womanising, forgetful Stefan, who probably loved Lisa but never realised it. Though Ophüls' narrative framing device suggests the intervention of fate – that faceless, indifferent force to which most failed cinematic romances are attributed – into the couple's doomed romance, the blame instead falls to the two lovers. Their personal failings not only denied them love, but ultimately granted them death. That we are alerted to these inevitable eventualities in advance (both through the framing device, and a coldly-brutal sequence that indifferently alerts us, but not Lisa, to a typhis outbreak) makes it all the more difficult to bear.

7/10

Currently my #7 film of 1948:

1) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston)
2) Ladri di biciclette {The Bicycle Thief} (Vittorio De Sicae)
3) Rope (Alfred Hitchcock)
4) Oliver Twist (David Lean)
5) Macbeth (Orson Welles)
6) Key Largo (John Huston)
7) Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls)
8) Secret Beyond the Door… (Fritz Lang)
9) Musik i mörker {Music in Darkness} (Ingmar Bergman)
10) Fort Apache (John Ford)

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Repeat Viewing: Rope (1948, Alfred Hitchcock)

TSPDT placing: #955

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Written by: Patrick Hamilton (play), Hume Cronyn (adaptation), Arthur Laurents (screenplay), Ben Hecht (uncredited)

Starring: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Cedric Hardwicke, Constance Collier, Douglas Dick, Edith Evanson, Dick Hogan, Joan Chandler
Alfred Hitchcock, despite his commercial popularity, was perhaps one of cinema's most audacious technical innovators. Even very early in his career – Blackmail (1929) was the first British film to make the cross-over into "talkies" – the Master of Suspense was forever searching for distinctive new means of telling a story and furthering his craft. Hitchcock was particularly interested in film-making that unfolded almost exclusively in a single restricted location, perhaps because of its likeness to a traditional stage play, or, more tellingly, because it allowed him to place the audience "in the room" with his nefarious characters. The director's first such endeavour was the radical Lifeboat (1944), which took place entirely on a small boat in the middle of the Atlantic, and similar "one-room" thrillers include Dial M for Murder (1954) and Rear Window (1954). Of course, the most experimental of these experiments was undoubtedly Rope (1948), a tense and intimate suspense tale that utilised extraordinarily-long takes to unfold the story almost in real-time. Against all odds, it's one of Hitchcock's finest.

Rope was adapted from Patrick Hamilton's 1929 stage play of the same name, itself inspired by the true-life story of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy University of Chicago students whose desire to commit the "perfect crime" culminated in murder in 1924. The film opens with the strangling murder of David Kentley (Dick Hogan) by two friends, Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger), who have come to consider murder an art-form, a privilege bestowed only upon a select few superior individuals. In order to crown their masterpiece, and flaunt their superiority before colleagues, the pair have organised a dinner party in their apartment – attended by David's friends and family – the buffet served over their victim's lifeless body in an unlocked chest. As Brandon narcissistically drops vague hints as to David's fate, and Phillip descends into a restless drunken binge, former prep-school housemaster Rupert Cadell (James Stewart) senses that his students have been up to something, and that his own teachings on the philosophy of the Übermensch (Nietzsche's "Superman") may have been responsible.

All this action unfolds through ten continuous long takes, of between four and ten minutes in length, with around half of the transitions made "invisible" by dollying forward into the darkness of a character's back. As the characters move back and forth across Hitchcock's set, their lines and movements precisely choreographed, the cameramen and sound recordists track smoothly with them, constantly moving props and furniture out of the path of the filming equipment. This was the first occasion that such an audacious film-making technique had been trialled, and Rope wouldn't be bettered until digital technology allowed Aleksandr Sokurov to film the entirety of Russian Ark (2002) in a single take. Some have subsequently termed Hitchcock's film to be nothing but a gimmick, but to do so would be grossly unfair to all involved – indeed, when I first viewed the film, such was my immersion in the story that, unbelievably enough, it took me the bulk of the running time to even notice that I was watching unbroken takes.

Rope deliberately carries the air of a stage play, though the addition of a camera necessarily amplifies the intimacy of every situation. By eliminating almost all editing from his film, Hitchcock suspends the artificiality that is inherent in the art form – effectively flouting the wisdom of Eisenstein and Vertov – and allows the actions of his characters to tell the story. Characteristically, this technique also adds an element of voyeurism to our viewing the film, the unbroken takes suggesting that we, the audience, are actually standing in the room observing the proceedings. As the third perpetrator in the murder, we watch through anxious eyes as Brandon Shaw smugly offers dangerous insinuations, Phillip Morgan shakes uncontrollably at every item that might give away his crime, and Rupert Cadell thoughtfully begins to put the pieces together, despite his disbelief that such a cold-blooded murder could have been committed. Exhausting, exhilarating and, above all, entertaining, Alfred Hitchcock's Rope finds the Master of Suspense at the top of his game, a shining example of experimentation turned into great art.

9/10

Currently my #3 film of 1948:

1) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston)
2) Ladri di biciclette {The Bicycle Thief} (Vittorio De Sicae)
3) Rope (Alfred Hitchcock)
4) Oliver Twist (David Lean)
5) Macbeth (Orson Welles)

What others have said:

"The novelty of the picture is not in the drama itself, it being a plainly deliberate and rather thin exercise in suspense, but merely in the method which Mr. Hitchcock has used to stretch the intended tension for the length of the little stunt. And, with due regard for his daring (and for that of Transatlantic Films), one must bluntly observe that the method is neither effective nor does it appear that it could be. For apart from the tedium of waiting or someone to open that chest and discover the hidden body which the hosts have tucked away for the sake of a thrill, the unpunctuated flow of image becomes quite monotonous. And the effort of application to a story of meager range becomes intense. The physical limitation of the camera to one approach compels it to stay as an eavesdropper on lots of dialogue and lots of business that are dull. And the yarn, by the nature of its writing, is largely actionless."

Bosley Crowther, 1948

"To Hitchcock's credit, Rope never feels much like a stage play despite the lack of edits and its apartment set. It's too alive for that. It's a movie through and through. The director dresses it up in every possible way he can: the sound design is particularly smart, splitting the party into separate conversational layers. There's a great sequence with only one actor, the hired help, walking to and from the foreground cleaning off the living room chest cum coffin as the murderers and the guests continue their conversations. The amount of tension Hitchcock manages to build by doing so little is admirable. He also makes elegant use of music. Another great moment occurs in a conversation between James Stewart and one of the killers, with the canny use of a metronome to add to the time bomb effect of the deadly evening."

Nathaniel Rogers

"Given Hitchcock's sensitivity to the anxieties upon which order is unnaturally erected, however, it is just as valid to see the murder as not so much a perversion of their mentor's teachings as a perversion of the feelings they are not allowed to express for each other. Hitchcock dutifully restores normalcy by sending estranged lovebirds Joan Chandler and Douglas Dick home at the end of the party, but his real interest lies with the society-whelped "monsters" and the smug teacher who comes to realize his own inescapable role in their condition. It's fitting that Hitchcock's themes of death and sex culminate in a pistol's climatic ejaculation out the window, a moment of necessary exposure that, leaving the three characters alone with their sobering revelations under the camera's non-dodging gaze, feels paradoxically liberating."

Nathaniel Rogers

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