Événement

NOIR CITY 14: THE RED SHOES / SPECTER OF THE ROSE

Saturday, January 30: BALLET DANCERS

The price of admission gets you into the evening double bill.

7:15
THE RED SHOES
(1948, The Archers. 133 min.)

Scr. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen
Dir. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Ballerina Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) lives to dance, but finds her desire torn between two men: the impresario Lermontov, who can fulfill her artistic ambitions, and Julian Craster, the young composer with whom she truly is in love. Her quandary culminates in a majestic staging of the classic fairy tale "The Red Shoes." One of the cinema's most vivid uses of Technicolor, this gorgeously designed film is one of the darkest and most compelling films ever made about artistic compulsion.

10:00
SPECTER OF THE ROSE
(1946, Republic Pictures. 90 min.)

Scr. Ben Hecht
Dir. Ben Hecht, Lee Garmes

Theatrical producer Max Polikoff and ballet instructor Madame La Sylph (Judith Anderson) want to stage a new show starring the great Andre Sanine, despite the dancer being a suspect in the murder of his wife seven months earlier. Ambitious young ballerina Haidi helps nurse the unstable Sanine back to health, in hopes she will be his partner in his triumphant return to the stage. But is Sanine guilty? Will the staging of Le Spectre de la Rose be an artistic triumph -- or a murderous tragedy?

35mm preservation print courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archive