Finally watched the 1948 film ‘The Red Shoes’, which was written, directed, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. As something of a fan of Hans Christian Andersen, it immediately got me thinking about the ways in which the film used the source material as inspiration for its themes.
The central character of the film, Victoria Page, the dancer, highlights the plight of the Individual, she represents the conflict between Duty and Self. Perhaps, more accurately, she is really an exploration of the divided self, two forces pulling against each other within one soul. Andersen reflects this struggle in his concern with the need to fashion one’s character, and to repent. In both versions, the shoes are synonymous with danger and temptation, representing extremes of human behaviour, such as Passion, Obsession, Pride and Egoism.
In the film, the enchanted shoes appear possessed of an all-consuming spirit suggestive of an undiminished flame that will burn/live on long after we ourselves have been extinguished. In the original tale, the shoes are equally indestructible and continue to haunt the girl, Karen, after her feet are chopped off.
Are the Red Shoes then, a malevolent force, are they without heart? Or, is their true curse the fact they are, all heart?
Is it imperative to submit, or does claiming mastery over the heart, break their hold?
Does this struggle not reveal the character’s ultimate need to be at one with the soul, this pull upon the heart? Is this not representative of the fullest way of living? Should we not then place ourselves in subservience to the shoes, their power?
In Andersen’s tale, only when Karen rids herself of the shoes is she allowed to enter the church and ‘be seen’, in the 1948 film too, the dancer’s fate suggests that the sway and pull of the heart can leave us with nothing.
However, in the original tale the way the little girl continues to be haunted by the presence of the shoes themselves, or in the film, the fact the shoes can only be removed after the Dancer has sacrificed her life, suggests their influence lingers. The person who puts on the shoes is forever altered, they are imperfect. Their life is lived to the utmost, to the nth degree, in a white heat of intensity. A life that is the very antithesis of nothing.
Perhaps it is the eventual shedding of the shoes themselves that proves to be the ultimate test, and the shoes themselves are thus endowed with the true essence of the individual who in turn gives the Red Shoes life, the person strong enough to wear them. The shoes are a means of preserving a part of us that never dies as we pass through every difficult iteration of our lives, the heart, therefore, emerges stronger, the soul a more authentic, vibrant version of our innate spirit, we either survive this transition, or we don’t.
