Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1948 classic ‘The Red Shoes’ was restored in 2009
and brings to the screen its saturated colors. In 4K, the restoration reminds you why this film converted generations of non-dance fans into believers. While it can be described as a ballet film, that label undersells its scope. Even for viewers who are not ballet enthusiasts (like me), the film operates on a deeper, more universal level — exploring ambition, obsession, and the cost of artistic devotion.

The story centers on two commanding figures who orbit the young dancer Victoria Page: Boris Lermontov and Julian Craster. Lermontov, played by Anton Walbrook with chilling elegance, is the impresario of the Ballet Lermontov. He’s magnetic, autocratic, lives entirely for the art of dance, and demands absolute loyalty from his dancers. To him, a dancer must live for nothing else.

“A dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love will never be a great dancer,” he warns.

Lermontov’s charisma makes him compelling, but his rigidity reveals a quiet cruelty. He’s not a villain, exactly, but a high priest of his own religion. He discovers Victoria and molds her into a star, but his patronage comes with a price: total submission. Julian Craster, played by Marius Goring, is the opposite force. He’s the young composer Lermontov hires to score a new ballet, “The Red Shoes.”

Passionate, idealistic, and fiercely protective of his work, Craster falls in love with Victoria and offers her the one thing Lermontov cannot: a life beyond the stage. Craster is not simply a rival to Lermontov’s authority; he is a challenge to his worldview. They represent two philosophies of a life well lived.

Victoria, portrayed by real-life ballerina Moira Shearer, is the emotional center of the film. She’s caught between them, and the film’s power is the recognizable conflict. Victoria has to choose between romance and her professional ambition — between Craster’s promise of domestic happiness and Lermontov’s promise of artistic greatness. It’s the difficult choice that many people, especially women, have faced in some form: the job that demands everything, the relationship that asks you to step back. Powell and Pressburger refuse to simplify it. There’s no right answer, and the film doesn’t pretend there is.

The film’s most famous sequence is the central 17-minute ballet sequence of “The Red Shoes” itself. This is ballet and more than ballet. It transcends the limitations of stage production. Powell and Pressburger use every tool cinema has — dissolves, superimpositions, trick photography, fluid camera movement, surreal transitions, and imaginative set design to pull us inside Victoria’s head as she dances. One moment she’s in the theater, the next she’s dancing across paper landscapes, through distorted mirrors, pursued by a newspaper that becomes a monster.

The shoes take on a life of their own. You’re not watching a performance; you’re experiencing an obsession. Reality dissolves into fantasy, and the audience is drawn directly into Victoria’s psychological and emotional experience. It is not just a performance; it is an expression of her inner life.

What lingers after “The Red Shoes” isn’t just the dancing or the heartbreak. It’s the two questions the film asks without flinching: What are you willing to give up for the thing you love? And what happens if that thing starts to consume you? It does not offer easy answers or compromises.

For ballet fans, it’s a holy film. For the rest of us, it’s proof that the right film can make you care about a world you never thought was yours.

“The Red Shoes” can be viewed for free on Kanopy and Plex, by subscription on The Criterion Channel, HBO Max, and YouTube TV; with ads on Pluto TV, Shout, The Roku Channel, and Tubi; for rent on Google Play, YouTube, Apple TV, Prime Video, and Fandango At Home.