It’s rumored that ballet dancers may be the maddest artist of them all. Find out tonight at #NoirCity14.
Saturday, January 30 Evening • BALLET DANCERS
NOIR CITY 14
Castro Theatre
www.NoirCity.com
Hosted by Eddie Muller
7:15 PM
THE RED SHOES
1948, The Archers. 133 mins. 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 PM
SPECTER OF THE ROSE
1946, Republic Pictures. 90 min. Scr. Ben Hecht. Dir. Ben Hecht and 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?
The last directorial effort of legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht is a
strange and utterly unique hybrid of elegant dance, florid dialogue,
theatrical drama, and droll comedy.
35mm preservation print courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archive
