The Red Shoes

[dirac]

Indeed. She was working with him as late as 1960, when she played one of the murder victims in Peeping Tom. But I don't think that's necessarily contradictory. Many performers have continued to work with directors and/or impresarios even when the experience behind the scenes isn't so enjoyable. The projects are too good. They want/need the work. The person is good for them in other ways. Or they let bygones be bygones.

The making of The Red Shoes was tough on the dancers, apparently. Shearer also seems to have believed that the success of the movie created a prejudice against her when she went back to the company, and possibly she was right. The short answer seems to be that she would have preferred to be remembered for something else. I don't think she fully appreciated how good the movie is, on its own terms, and how good she is in it.

It Might Have Been Department: Following The Red Shoes, Jack Cardiff wanted to make a short film of La Boutique Fantasque with Massine and Shearer. Massine was enthusiastic, but de Valois strongly deprecated the idea and wouldn't allow Cardiff to use Shearer or the Sadler's Wells corps, so the project never happened. What a loss.

[canbelto]

It's also my understanding that Shearer also wanted to go into serious acting, and not just films where she was called upon to both dance and act. She might have been angry at Michael Powell that not as many of those projects materialized as she had wished.

Anyway there is frustratingly little footage of Shearer's dancing onstage. I did find one clip:

[dirac]

She might have been angry at Michael Powell that not as many of those projects materialized as she had wished.

It's possible. That does sound a mite petty, though, and not much like Shearer.

An article on the symbolism of red shoes in art discusses both "The Red Shoes" film and the original tale by Andersen.

Andersen’s The Red Shoes has influenced cultural considerations of such footwear ever since. Poor but pretty Karen is punished for her vanity, for her attempts to rise above her station and for “normal sensuality”, with a pair of possessed red shoes, cursed by an old soldier, which dance her mercilessly day and night. The only cure is to cut off Karen’s feet, and the shoes then dance her foot-stumps away, removing her “sin” at the same time as her freedom of movement. Echoes of frenzy and demonic possession merge here with ideas about controlling women’s pleasure in their own physicality.

[dirac]

The British Film Institute is celebrating the partnership of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Quote

On set, the stills photographer Baron, aka Sterling Henry Nahum, captured Moira Shearer for this specially commissioned publicity portrait (above), which alludes to being a moment of cinema despite being staged specifically for a stills camera. History doesn’t record for how long Shearer had to hold this position, or how many times. It became a central image in the promotional campaign.