DIRECTORS: The Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
“The Red Shoes” (1948) tells the story of a gifted young ballerina forced to choose between absolute devotion to her art and the man she loves, a conflict that leads to one of cinema’s most tragic finales.
At the center is Victoria Page (Moira Shearer), an aspiring dancer whose talent catches the eye of Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), the autocratic impresario of the world‑renowned Ballet Lermontov. Lermontov believes that great art demands total sacrifice, and he grooms Vicky for stardom with near‑religious intensity. Vicky is cast as the lead in a new ballet, “The Red Shoes,” adapted from the Hans Christian Andersen tale about a girl compelled to dance until death. The ballet becomes a metafictional mirror of Vicky’s own life: the more she succeeds, the more she is consumed by the demands of her art. Complicating this is her growing love for Julian (Marius Goring), the young composer who writes the ballet’s score. Their romance threatens Lermontov’s rigid belief that love and art cannot coexist. He forces Vicky into an impossible choice: abandon Julian or abandon the stage.
The Red Shoes is also one of the richest queer‑coded films of the 1940s, and a queer‑theory framing doesn’t just “fit”; it clarifies the film’s emotional architecture. An introduction to the major players:
ANTON WALBROOK’S Boris Lermontov: QUEER IMPRESARIO–
Anton Walbrook’s Boris Lermontov is one of the most unmistakably queer-coded figures in mid‑century British cinema. His celibate, aestheticized existence, his intense emotional investment in beautiful young men and women, his monastic devotion to art, and his rage at heterosexual coupling align him with what writer Richard Dyer calls the queer maestro archetype — the artist whose sexuality is sublimated into aesthetic control.
Walbrook himself was a gay, closeted Austrian émigré, and his performance carries the emotional precision of someone who knows what it means to live a life of sublimated desire. Lermontov’s fury at Vicky’s romance with Julian is not heterosexual jealousy; it is queer jealousy — the jealousy of a man whose erotic and emotional energies are invested in the creation of art, not in normative domesticity.
He wants Vicky not as a lover but as a vessel for his artistic ideal, a dynamic that mirrors the queer mentor‑muse relationship of Diaghilev/Nijinsky.
Walbrook is magnificent in the role, and his performance is the major reason to see The Red Shoes. Along with George Sanders’ Addison DeWitt in All About Eve, Walbrook’s Lermontov is one of the perfect queer-coded villains.
2. LEONIDE MASSINE’S Grischa Ljubov: QUEER BALLET MASTER – CHOREOGRAPHER – Léonide Massine’s Grischa, the Ballet Master, is coded as queer through his flamboyant physicality, his camp humor, his disdain for heterosexual melodrama, and his devotion to the all‑male spaces of rehearsal and discipline.
Massine— himself gay— a real‑life star of the Ballets Russes, brings with him the queer lineage of Diaghilev’s company — a world where male beauty, male bodies, and male mentorship were central. Grischa’s relationship to Lermontov is that of a long‑term queer collaborator: they share a world, a language, and a set of values that exclude heterosexual romance as a distraction.
3. ROBERT HELPMANN’S Ivan Boleslawsky: QUEER MALE LEAD – Robert Helpmann — himself gay — plays Ivan, the company’s male lead. His presence brings the unmistakable aura of queer theatrical culture.
The Ballet Company: A QUEER SPACE
The Lermontov Ballet is a queer utopia in José Esteban Muñoz’s sense: a chosen family, a world governed by aesthetic values rather than heteronormative ones, a space where beauty, discipline, and devotion replace marriage and reproduction. Within this world, heterosexuality is the disruptive force. Julian’s love for Vicky is treated not as natural but as a threat to the queer order.
MOIRA SHEARER’S Vicky: QUEER SUBJECT
Though not queer in orientation, Vicky is queer in structure: She is torn between two incompatible worlds. She cannot inhabit the heterosexual domestic sphere without losing her identity. She cannot remain in the queer artistic sphere without sacrificing her emotional life.
Her tragedy mirrors the queer experience of the era: to choose authenticity is to choose exile; to choose belonging is to choose self‑erasure.
The ballet’s fairy‑tale structure — the girl who must dance until she dies — becomes a metaphor for the queer artist whose identity is inseparable from performance. When you learn that the original story and screenplay by Powell and Pressburger was originally written about Nijinsky and Diaghilev, but was later changed to The Red Shoes, the blocks begin to fall into place.
Massine = the mind
Helpmann = the body
Walbrook = the will
Together they form the queer artistic world Vicky enters
— and ultimately cannot survive.
Shearer is also exceptionally good, not just as a ballet dancer but in the character of Vicky. She is the only one in the cast who give a naturalistic performance and, in the midst of all that camp, she manages to carry it off.
6. MARIUS GORING’s Julian: VICKY’S ALLEGEDLY STRAIGHT HUSBAND GIVE’S OFF MAJOR GAY VIBES.
Julian loves opera, camp, and long flowing scarves. He always seems queer. If the movie was made today, he would be having an affair with Lermontov, who is clearly obsessed with him.
The Red Shoes is not simply a film about art versus love. It is a film about queer artistic lineage, queer mentorship, queer spaces, and the queer cost of devotion.
At least three characters — Lermontov, Grischa, and Ivan— are explicitly queer-coded, and the entire ballet company operates as a queer micro‑society whose values clash fatally with heterosexual romance.
OSCAR NOMINATIONS: BEST FILM (The Archers: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger), BEST STORY (Emeric Pressburger), BEST ORIGINAL SCORE (Brian Easdale – Won), BEST ART DIRECTION (Hein Heckroth and Arthur Lawson- Won), BEST EDITING (Reginald Mills).
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Jack Cardiff
The Archers
General Film Distributers GFD) – Rank Organization: UK and Europe
Eagle-Lion Films: US
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