YMMV / The Red Shoes (1948)

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Film critic Danny Peary, in his book Alternate Oscars, regards Lermontov far more sympathetically than Julian. He sees Julian as the real villain for insisting that Vicki can't have her career and marriage to him, despite the fact that his career as a composer is unimpeded by the same.
• Award Snub: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger weren't nominated for Best Director(s), while Moira Shearer was snubbed for Best Actress.
• Tear Jerker: The ending. Vicki, unable to choose between a life with Julian and a career in the ballet, attempts suicide via leaping off a balcony in front of a train. A shaken Boris announces that she will not be able to dance tonight or any night, but as a mark of respect, The Ballet of the Red Shoes will go on, with an empty spotlight in her place. Bleeding and dying, Vicki asks Julian to remove the red shoes.
  • Also during that scene the cast is completely shattered by the news that Vicki is dead, the shoemaker is crying beforehand while Boris shouts the words out, the cast tries to hold it in as they awkwardly carry on, but one dancer has a breakdown on the left of the shoe shop, and one of the others has to help her off stage and at the end the boyfriend crying.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The Ballet of the Red Shoes is full of this, particularly the segment where Vicky dances with a man-shaped newspaper.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: It's based on a fairy tale! And ballet! High culture! Never mind the ballet-within-a-film is avant-garde expressionist Nightmare Fuel where (just like the story) the heroine dances herself to death in the red shoes, and that's before the real-world framing story ends with the heroine, torn between her love for her husband and her love for ballet, commits suicide by leaping off a balcony in front of a train.

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