Coming up on Saturday at the Described Movies: The Red shoes, and The Picture of Dorian Grey.

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From this Saturday at 12am Eastern, that’s 6pm Saturday in NZ, 4pm in Sydney and 5am in the UK, and repeated every four hours throughout the day, it’s the described movies, The Red shoes from 1948, and The Picture of Dorian Grey from 1945.
The Red Shoes is a 1948 British drama film written, directed, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
It follows Victoria Page ( Moira Shearer), an aspiring ballerina who joins the world-renowned Ballet Lermontov, owned, and operated by Boris Lermontov ( Anton Walbrook), who tests her dedication to the ballet by making her choose between her career and her romance with composer Julian Craster ( Marius Goring).
It marked the feature film debut of Shearer, an established ballerina, and features Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine, and Ludmilla Tchérina, other renowned dancers from the ballet world.
The plot is based on the 1845 eponymous fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen and features a ballet within it by the same title, also adapted from the Andersen work.
The Red Shoes was filmmaking team Powell and Pressburger's tenth collaboration and follow-up to 1947's Black Narcissus.
It had been conceived by Powell and producer Alexander Korda in the 1930s, from whom the duo purchased the rights in 1946.
Most of the cast were professional dancers.
Filming of The Red Shoes took place in mid-1946, primarily in France and England.
Upon release, The Red Shoes received critical acclaim, especially in the United States, where it received a total of five Academy Award nominations, including a win for Best Original Score and Best Art Direction.
It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score and was named one of the Top 10 Films of the Year by the National Board of Review.
Despite this, some dance critics gave the film unfavourable reviews as they felt its fantastical, impressionistic centrepiece sequence depicted ballet in an unrealistic manner, influenced by German expressionistic cinema of the 1920s.
The film proved a major financial success and was the first British film in history to gross over $5 million in theatrical rentals in the United States.
Retrospectively, The Red Shoes is regarded as one of the best films of Powell and Pressburger's partnership and one of the greatest films of all time.
It was voted the ninth greatest British film of all time by the British Film Institute in 1999.
The film underwent an extensive digital restoration beginning in 2006 at the UCLA Film and Television Archive to correct significant damage to the original negatives.
The restored version of the film screened at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and was subsequently issued on Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection.
In 2017, a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers, and critics for Time Out magazine saw it ranked the fifth best British film ever.
Directed by: Michael Powell, and Emeric Pressburger.
Screenplay by: Michael Powell, and Emeric Pressburger.
Based on: "The Red Shoes" 1845 fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen.
Produced by: Michael Powell, and Emeric Pressburger.
Starring: Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring, Moira Shearer, Léonide Massine, Robert Helpmann, Albert Bassermann, Esmond Knight, and Ludmilla Tchérina.
Cinematography: Jack Cardiff.
Edited by: Reginald Mills.
Music by: Brian Easdale.
Production Company: The Archers.
Distributed by: General Film Distributors.
Release date: 6 September 1948 (United Kingdom).
File Length: 127 minutes.
Country: United Kingdom.
Languages: English, and French.
Budget: £505,600.
Box office: $5 million (U.S. and Canada rentals).
The Picture of Dorian Gray is a 1945 American supernatural horror-drama film based on Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel of the same name.
Released in June 1945 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the film was directed by Albert Lewin, and stars George Sanders as Lord Henry Wotton and Hurd Hatfield as Dorian Gray.
Shot primarily in black-and-white, the film features four colour inserts in three-strip Technicolor.
of Dorian's portrait, these are a special effect, the first two inserts picturing a youthful Dorian and the second two a degenerate one.
Directed by: Albert Lewin.
Screenplay by: Albert Lewin.
Based on: The Picture of Dorian Gray 1891 novel by Oscar Wilde.
Produced by: Pandro S. Berman.
Starring: George Sanders, Hurd Hatfield, Donna Reed, Angela Lansbury, Peter Lawford, and Lowell Gilmore.
Narrated by: Cedric Hardwicke.
Cinematography: Harry Stradling.
Edited by: Ferris Webster.
Music by: Herbert Stothart.
Colour process: Technicolor.
Production Company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Distributed by: Loew's Inc.
Release date: 3 March 1945.
File Length: 110 minutes.
Country: United States.
Language: English.
Budget: $1,918,000.
Box office: $2,975,000.
Any questions, comments, or ideas for future described movies: e-mail me: anthony at mushroomfm dot com (e-mail address written that way to cut down on
spam)
Enjoy the movies,