The Criterion Collection
Essays
May 24, 1999 — Before The Red Shoes, there were films with dance numbers. After it, there was a new medium which combined dance, design, and music in a dreamlike spectacle. Hollywood musicals were quick to pay tribute—An American in Paris was the most...
Jul 19, 2010 — “Why do you want to dance?” “Why do you want to live?” A question followed by another question stands at the beating heart of The Red Shoes. It’s an entirely rhetorical exchange, but it underscores the power and the mystery...
In Theaters
Jan 28, 2016 — Repertory Picks Last weekend, at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre, the Film Noir Foundation kicked off its fourteenth annual Noir City celebration. The focus of this year’s festival, which showcases twenty-five favorites of the genre, is cinema’s fascination with the art...
May 14, 2009 — A new, restored print of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes is premiering in Cannes tonight, with Martin Scorsese going onstage to introduce it. So what’s the big Scorsese-Powell connection anyway? Well, you can learn all about it...
Features
Aug 14, 2016 — While considered to lie outside the highly policed boundaries of film noir, films like Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind and Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes nevertheless share many of noir’s stylistic and thematic tropes.
Nov 30, 2009 — The following essay was originally written for Criterion’s website in 2005, on the occasion of the DVD release of Powell and Pressburger’s The Tales of Hoffmann. We have posted it here to coincide with BFI Southbank’s ongoing Hein Heckroth exhibition...
Nov 21, 2008 — Kevin Macdonald is the grandson of the filmmaker Emeric Pressburger (A Canterbury Tale, The Red Shoes). Macdonald’s directorial credits include 2000's Academy Award–winning One Day in September, about the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and 2003's...
The actor, director, and writer shares his love for the physical comedy of Jackie Chan, praises the timeless beauty of The Red Shoes, and talks about discovering noir classics like The Big Heat and In a Lonely Place on the...
The actor recalls a memorable viewing of The Red Shoes, celebrates performances by Kirsten Dunst and Nicole Kidman, and shares why The Worst Person in the World made her want to work with Joachim Trier.