People who have seen Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes are always envious of those who are about to see it for the first time. This is the sort of motion picture experience that one never easily forgets, the sort of film that burns itself into the mind's eye. Audiences now have an opportunity to see this 1948 masterpiece at its most luminous and vivid, following restoration by the UCLA Film and Television Archive in the US, with support from the British Film Institute and Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation. Screening at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and starring Australia's Sir Robert Helpmann, the film is a tragic fairytale about a young woman who joins a renowned ballet company, only to find herself torn between its composer and its domineering artistic director.

The Australian, 15 January 2010