by Brett Warner
This Friday, auteur filmmaker Darren Aronofsky’s latest psychological and emotional rollercoaster Black Swan will be dancing across a handful of movie theater screens for a limited release. The film stars Natalie Portman as a hard working young ingénue who lands the lead in a new production of Swan Lake only to find herself haunted by her more sensual competition (played by Mila Kunis) and — in true Aronofsky fashion — lots of other creepy shit. The two stars were coached and choreographed by Mary Helen Bowers and New York City Ballet principal Benjamin Millepied respectively and underwent months of rigorous training necessary to replicate an art form that — for professionals — requires years of intense, borderline obsessive dedication. (I’ve dated two former ballerinas – trust me, they don’t fuck around.) Black Swan should have Aronofsky fans geeking out to the nth degree, though it’s not exactly the first film about a ballet company to deal with themes of obsession, jealousy, sexuality, and, well… other creepy shit.
London filmmaking duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger released The Red Shoes in 1948, a critically acclaimed musical drama about a touring ballet company that remained one of the highest grossing British pictures for many years. In the film, hard-working young dancer Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) catches the eye of obsessively serious ballet company owner Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), who plucks her out from amongst the understudies and commissions a new ballet with her in the lead role. Based on Hans Christen Anderson’s fairy tale about a pair of shoes that dance a woman to death, the titular new ballet is written by company composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring), who clashes with the precocious ballerina during rehearsals only to fall hopelessly (and, even in movie terms, quickly) in love with her.
Lermontov soon learns of the young couple’s dalliances; consumed by jealousy and an obsessive compulsion to mold Ms. Page (on stage and in the bedroom, no doubt), he fires the composer and loses his lead star in the process. The two lovebirds move to London, with Victoria giving up ballet and Craster working on a new opera. Though genuinely in love with him, Victoria is lured back onto the stage by Lermontov, who has retained creative rights to The Red Shoes. On the eve of her return performance, Victoria is confronted by the two men and forced to choose between living a happy life and being a great dancer. Overwhelmed by her indecision, she throws herself off a balcony onto a moving train, perishing with the red shoes on her now useless feet.
Powell and Pressburger wisely opted to work with actual ballet veterans instead of quickly trained actors, employing a small company of Royal Ballet professionals including Léonide Massine and Robert Helpmann, who played active roles in both the film and its choreography. Lead actress Moira Shearer was a young ballerina who caught the filmmakers’ eyes performing at the famed Sadler’s Wells Theatre in the mid-1940s. The famous ballet scene itself, choreographed by Helpmann, utilized over fifty dancers, 120 matte paintings, and took six weeks to film.
Martin Scorsese and other well-respected directors have cited The Red Shoes’ color palette and layered composition as a major influence, but what gives the film its menacing undertones is the spectacular performance by Anton Walbrook as the coldly calculating Boris Lermontov. Throughout the film, Lermontov repeatedly pits the ideas of life and dancing against one another, making clear that in order for Victoria to become a prima ballerina, she must give up all earthly wants, desires, and pleasures and give herself fully to his control and influence. Their relationship is both detached and sensually charged, with Lermontov spending many scenes brooding alone, contemplating how he will mold this young woman to do his bidding. It’s some seriously unnerving stuff that’s expertly planted throughout what could easily pass as a harmless post-war musical.
During the performance of “The Red Shoes,” Victoria sees both Lermontov and Craster in the role of the demented shoemaker. In different ways, the two men try to control and conquer her completely, with zero consideration for her hopes or feelings. For Victoria Page, it’s either life as a happy homemaker or death as a master ballerina. She tragically chooses the later, as the film ends with a single spotlight dancing onstage in her place.
Aronofsky has described Black Swan as companion piece to his last film, 2008’s Oscar-nominated The Wrestler, and it’s not as scoff-worthy a comparison as you might think. Both films deal with the physical and emotional tolls of art, the pain of sacrificing a normal existence to the relentless demands of the craft. I don’t pretend to comprehend the intricate and intensely physical work that goes into professional dance, but anyone can recognize that it is one of the highest art forms we have. As many other Hollywood films featuring hopelessly faking it actors have learned the hard way, the insular world of practiced ballet does not take kindly to the cheapening of its art form.
Early audience reactions to Black Swan have been mixed, which I suppose is to be expected from an art-house thriller about ballerinas and doppelgangers, but like The Red Shoes, the film deserves credit for respecting the craft of ballet and making the effort to lend some hard-earned authenticity to the portrayal of it. As trainer Mary Helen Bowers told the New York Times, “The idea was, if you were going to look and move like a professional ballerina, you have to train like one, and professional ballerinas dance for 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, for years and years on end… So the idea with Natalie [Portman] was, we have to get you as close to that mark as possible for as many months as possible leading up to the film.”
In this era of CGI characters and digital replacement, I’d like to believe that movie audiences can still appreciate some good old fashioned labor when they see it.
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