Film Analyse, Analyse Mise-en-scene, in The Red Shoes (1948 film)and Essay

Film Analyse, Analyse Mise-en-scene, in The Red Shoes (1948 film)and do Ten shots analyse of it - Essay Example Central to the plot is the clash between Miss Victoria Page’s (played by Moira Shearer) artistic ambition and her love life. Tragedy looms large in this type of plot set up and inevitably Miss Page is ruined by this conflict. In this way the plot and the simple straightforward narrative do not match the creative and exuberant visual imagery. Despite the said flaws, the film is worth studying purely its picturization and visual aesthetics. This essay will is an endeavour to study the mise-en-scene of a handful of scenes from the film. To be able to understand the principles being applied for constructing various shots, one has to keep in mind Michael Powell’s philosophy in filmmaking. Powell believed in the notion of the ‘composed film’, in which, â€Å"music, emotion and acting made a complete whole, of which the music was the master†. (Mayer, 2008, p.48) This philosophy is writ large in The Red Shoes, as well as Powell’s other notable films B lack Narcissus (1947) and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951). As a matter of fact, in The Red Shoes, Lermontov says to Miss Page on more than one occasion that â€Å"music is everything†. This is perhaps a reflection of Powell’s own understanding of composing a film. ... riest (danced by Ivan Boleslawsky/Robert Helpmann), to an infernal, red-lit space that is inhabited by the ballet's demonic shoemaker (danced by Ljubov/Leonid Massine).† (Grist, 2012, p.28) These sequences of events are synchronized to the tempo and prompt of the instrumental music. Just as the musical composition by Brian Easdale carries symmetry and repetitive structures within it, the performance of The Ballet of the Red Shoes display a similar arrangement. There is a conscious attempt on part of the directors to unite the strands of various media of art into one dramatic output. It is this accentuation of dramatic effect thus produced which accounts for the continuing remembrance of this film and its ballet performances by generations of film audiences. (Mclean, 2008, p. 135) As a treatise on cinematic art, the film reveals its exceptional ability to exploit the medium and alter accepted boundaries. In its own implicit way, The Red Shoes goes on to shatter the myths surroun ding fairytales, the world of classical ballet and the myths surrounding cinema itself. The notion that fairytales all end on a happy note is refuted in the film. Instead, the comforting aspects of Christen Anderson’s fairy tale (upon which the film is based) are disillusioned and the underlying horror is revealed. For example, the earlier part of the film has the audience believe that Vicky and Julian will live happily ever after. But as events unfold and take a dire turn, the aspirations of the couple are frustrated. In Anderson’s fairytale, a young girl, similar in age and disposition to Vicky Page, wishes to wear the red shoes. But upon wearing them, she cannot stop herself from dancing. This eventually leads to unbearable exhaustion she even resorts to ask the executioner to have mercy