Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by, but the Red Shoes go on.

lesliehowards:

Cinematography by Jack Cardiff.

Black Narcissus (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), The African Queen (1951).

What I had picked up from painting was that light was the most important thing. The lighting played an important part. So it’s easy enough to analyse it and work out what looked good or what worked and so on. The only difference was I realised early on that because film was a transparency, and the Hollywood photographers used to use a lot of back-light because it made everything look crisper and glamorous. I realised that back-light and I relied very much on what I had picked up from paintings – a simplicity of lighting. Mind you, I recognised that painting’s a still picture where it’s easy enough to have a lighting effect, and on film where the actor gets up and walks around the room, you had to bear that in mind. But I still felt then, and still do, that you stick to a simple form of lighting.

[…]My original love in painting was Rembrandt, Caravaggio, people like that – but then I fell in love with the Impressionists. The Impressionists exaggerated everything. If someone is sitting on the grass, they would reflect the green light on their face. I sometimes used subtle green filters that probably one in fifty would notice but I got satisfaction out of it. That was the great thing. I used to use on the spot rails – in those days we used lots of arcs and arc-lights – when light was apparently coming from the sky. I used to use a faint blue filter so that it’s cold, and I used to use their methods by exaggerating the colour. I was always fighting with Technicolour because they wanted complete realism, whatever that was.

-Why do you want to dance?
-Why do you want to live?

“The Ballet of The Red Shoes” is from a fairy tale by Hans Andersen. It is the story of a young girl who is devoured with an ambition to attend a dance in a pair of Red Shoes. She gets the shoes and goes to the dance. For a time, all goes well and she is very happy. At the end of the evening she get’s tired and wants to go home, but the Red Shoes are not tired. In fact, the Red Shoes are never tired. They dance her out into the street, they dance her over the mountains and valleys, through fields and forests, through night and day. Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by, but the Red Shoes dance on. In the end, she dies.

cheapandjuicy:

89. 100 movies | The Red Shoes

Don’t forget, a great impression of simplicity can only be achieved by great agony of body and spirit.

“Don’t forget, a great impression of simplicity can only be achieved by great agony of body and spirit.” - The Red Shoes (1948)

“Why do you want to dance?”
“Why do you want to live?”
“Well I don’t know exactly why, er, but I must.”
“That’s my answer too.”

Don’t forget, a great impression of simplicity can only be achieved by great agony of body and spirit.

- Why do you want to dance?

- Why do you want to live? 

“A dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love can never be a great dancer. Never.”
The Red Shoes, 1948

lucynic83:

250 Favorite Classic Films in no particular order
⇨ The Red Shoes (1948)
Boris Lermontov: Why do you want to dance? 
Victoria Page: Why do you want to live?

- “Why do you want to dance?”
- “Why do you want to live?”