A Group Marriage without Sex: Fusion and Collaboration in The Archers’ The Red Shoes (1948)

The Red Shoes was above all a work of creative collaboration between artists and technicians in many fields, on a scale rarely attempted in the cinema.

—Ian Christie, Arrows (83)

the red shoes is a backstage melodrama about the fictional Ballet Lermontov and the struggles and sacrifices that take place around the production of a ballet called The Ballet of the Red Shoes. Written, produced, and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, The Red Shoes was the pair’s thirteenth collaboration and the tenth since they founded their production company, The Archers, in 1941–42. Prior to their association Powell had been directing for a variety of Anglo-American companies in France and Britain since the late 1920s. Pressburger had amassed a string of screenwriting credits at UFA studios in the early 1930s, before leaving Germany to continue his career first in France and then in England. Brought together on The Spy in Black (1939) by producer Alexander Korda, Powell and Pressburger collaborated on war-effort productions for the duration of World War II. Including The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) and A Canterbury Tale (1944), these films distinguished themselves from more mundane wartime propaganda fare by their formal and thematic sophistication. In the case of Colonel Blimp, distinction came by way of a degree of controversy.

The Archers was an independent film production company essentially representing the interests of Powell and Pressburger. More broadly, however, The Archers combined the talents of such regulars as Alfred Junge and Hein Heckroth (design), Allan Gray and Brian Easdale (music), Erwin Hillier and Jack Cardiff (photography), Reginald Mills (editing), and a range of actors, including Anton Walbrook, Roger Livesey, Kathleen Byron, Esmond Knight, Ludmilla Tcherina, and Robert Helpmann. David Niven, Deborah Kerr, and Moria Shearer also made notable, repeat appearances with the company. The Red Shoes followed A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and Black Narcissus (1947), with the three films marking The Archers’ postwar transition to peacetime themes and, arguably, the creative high point of the company’s entire output.

This article considers Archers expert Ian Christie’s proposition, cited previously, and writer/filmmaker Kevin Macdonald’s view of The Red Shoe as “probably the pinnacle of the collaborative principle in movie-making” (284). It considers this collaborative practice in relation to Christie’s argument that there is a strong emphasis on a fusion of all the arts in the films of The Archers generally (Arrows 19). It presents close analysis of the film’s key production scene, set in a villa outside Nice, and a detailed reading of the primary accounts of Powell, Pressburger, and other members of The Archers. In doing so, this article demonstrates the thematic emphasis on collaboration and the fusion of visual and performance art forms in The Red Shoes. It also outlines the way these themes stood as principles of creative practice that greatly influenced The Archers and, in particular, its departments of music, art direction, script, production, and direction in the making of this vastly influential film. This article finds that these principles of collaboration and fusion are potent and highly useful to reading both The Red Shoes and the creative practice of The Archers. These principles are, however, full of ambiguities and contradictions. Through the film analysis and primary account discourse presented here, it becomes clear that neither The Red Shoes nor The Archers can be fully understood without acknowledging these contradictions. The Archers celebrate these principles of creative practice not only in their observance but also in their breach.

Figure 1.

Moira Shearer as Victoria Page in The Red Shoes (1948).

Among the many memorable instances of creative and collaborative fusion represented in The Red Shoes, a production conference scene set in the Villa La Leopolda at Villefranche-sur-Mer stands out as a remarkable example. For Michael Powell the scene is “the heart of the picture” (A Life 657). Up to this point the film has plotted the workings of the celebrated Ballet Lermontov in its London and Paris seasons...