Analysis:

One of Powell and Pressburger's best-loved films, The Red Shoes is perhaps the definitive ballet movie. The film interweaves the story of an ambitious young ballerina, Vicky (Moira Shearer), with that of the Red Shoes ballet (inspired by Hans Christian Andersen) which forms its centrepiece - the most dazzling flight of fantasy in Powell's career, and scarcely matched in British cinema.

By this time, the duo were turning increasingly away from realism, and although the film was ultimately a success (it was rewarded with Oscars for its art direction, by Hein Heckroth and Arthur Lawson, and original score, by Brian Easdale), it baffled many critics, and some found its tragic ending in poor taste. Such objections would be remembered twelve years later when Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) was critically mauled.

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