Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, and Marius Goring.
First things first- I don't much care for ballet (Sorry mom). But for some reason this film works for me magnificently. One of the major reasons for this may be because Powell and Pressburger understand artists so deeply that they realize that the desire and need to express oneself through one's chosen art can be an all-consuming and sometimes self-destructive impulse. Jack Cardiff's luminous cinematography, in "glorious Technicolor" as they used to say, enhances the fairy-tale quality of the story, as young ballerina Shearer (has red hair ever been brighter on film?) rises in the ranks of a famed ballet troupe run by Walbrook (whose character name, Boris Lermontov, is one of the coolest character names I've ever heard in a movie). The centerpiece of the film is an original ballet composed and choreographed for the film, based on the titular tale, and while I'm not a ballet fan I absolutely adore this sequence, with beautiful music by Brian Easdale, energetic and elegant dancing, and positively inspired images, especially the newspaper that turns into a dancer and then back again.
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