BAROMETER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 510, 1 April 1949, Page 14

BAROMETER

Fair to Fine: "The Red Shoes." Mainly Fair: "Fame is the Sptr."

(continued from previous page) The story is trite and trivial in its broad outlines (Girl meets Impresario, Boy meets Impresario, Girl meets Boy; Girl gets Big Chance, Boy ditto, and so on)-almost as trite as the polite disclaimer, which precedes the credits, that "any resemblance between the characters and real persons, living or dead, is purely co-incidental," but the development of an allegorical parallel between the theme of the Red Shoes ballet and the lives of the principals who take part in it adds an element of the grotesque and the fantastic which seems appropriate in a story of the ballet, even if it does trap the producers into one monumental gaffe. As the girl who becomes a prima balerina in record time, Moira Shearer is lovely to look at both on-stage and off, dancing superbly and acting with unaffected competence; but Marius Goring, as the young musician with whom she falls in love, over-acts insufferably, especially when on the conductor’s podium. As the impresario-producer, Anton Walbrook may suggest Diaghilef to some (though after he had appeared once or twice in a richly brocaded dressinggown of Oriental cut I found myself thinking of Trebitsch Lincoln), but the dominant figure in the cast, and the real star, is Leonide Massine. He dances with daemonic energy and there is an explosive quality to his acting which compels one’s attention whoever | else shares the scene with him. He’s worth going a long way to see, which means, of course, that The Red Shoes (whatever its faults) is worth going a long way to see, too.