#hein heckroth

[blacknarcissus]

“Time rushes by, life rushes by, love rushes by, but the red shoes dance on…”

The Red Shoes (1948), dir. Emeric Pressburger & Michael Powell

[ulrichgebert]

Michael Powells farbenfrohe Ausdeutung der schaurigen Serienmörder(hurrah!)-Oper Herzog Blaubarts Burg für den süddeutschen Rundfunk gibt es jetzt spektakulär vom Britischen Filminstitut restauriert, verglichen mit dem rotteligen Video auf Youtube, das wir zuletzt verwendet haben (aber schauen sie hier die Bildchen) erweist sie sich jetzt viel deutlicher als das unvergleichliche Wunderwerk, das sie ist. "Das Auge hört zu", wie Paul Claudel prächtig formuliert, sagt die Wikipedia.

[luckypluckychair]

The Red Shoes | 1948

Director: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Production designer: Hein Heckroth

[vampirecorleone]

"The title ballet sequence took six weeks to shoot and employed over 120 paintings by Hein Heckroth. The dancing newspaper was achieved through careful cutting and use of wires." The Red Shoes (1948) dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

[absolut-maenaiac]

Hein Heckroth

[byneddiedingo]

Robert Helpmann and Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948) Cast: Anton Walbrook, Moira Shearer, Marius Goring, Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine, Ludmilla Tchérina, Esmond Knight, Albert Bassermann, Austin Trevor, Irene Browne. Screenplay: Emeric Pressburger, Keith Winter, Michael Powell, based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen. Cinematography: Jack Cardiff. Production design: Hein Heckroth. Film editing: Reginald Mills. Music: Brian Easdale. Costume design: Hein Heckroth. In its digital restoration, The Red Shoes almost certainly looks better than it ever did even in the most optimal theatrical showing, its colors brighter and sharper, its darks deeper and more detailed. But is that necessarily a good thing? I'm not like one of those audiophiles who insist that old vinyl LPs sound better than CDs or any digital audio process -- I like being able to hear things without surface pops and skips. But I do think that in the case of a film like The Red Shoes, where suspension of disbelief is essential, something has been lost. The great red snood of Moira Shearer's hair is revealed to be a thing of individual strands that might have benefited from a quick brushing before her closeups. The special-effects moments, like Vicky's (Shearer) leap into the red shoes or Boleslawsky's (Robert Helpmann) transformation into the newspaper man, are more glaringly just rudimentary jump cuts. There's a loss of glamour and magic that hasn't been compensated for, even though we can now see Jack Cardiff's photography of Hein Heckroth's designs with greater clarity. I will also admit that I have never been in the front ranks of the fans of The Red Shoes. While I admire the storytelling ability of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, I have to question the moral of the story, which seems to be that a woman can't have both a great career and a successful private life, or in a larger sense, that art is impossible without a loss of self. Granted, the story comes from the realm of fairytale, which is never without an element of cruelty, but is Vicky's suicide a necessary follow-through, or just a submission on the part of the screenwriters to the demands of some kind of closure, given that they've never made the character more than a stereotype: the woman torn between the demands of two men? Ravishing to the eye, The Red Shoes doesn't satisfy the mind or the heart.

[batofthedead]

The Red Shoes

(Dir. Michael Powell) art direction by Hein Heckroth

[isreport]

Hein Heckroth, story board from “The ballet of the red shoes”, Harry Ransom Center, 1948

[davidlynch]

The Red Shoes (1948) dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger Drawings executed by Hein Heckroth & Ivor Beddoes 

[sesiondemadrugada]

The Small Back Room (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1949).

[now-watching]

Hein Heckroth, who would receive two Academy Award nominations for his work on “The Tales of Hoffmann” (1951), dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

[ulrichgebert]

Ein Powell und Pressburger-Musikfilm, den ich noch nicht kannte! Es gibt Gründe dafür, daß er nicht gar so bekannt ist. Oh, Rosalinda!!, eine modernisiserte Fassung der allseits beliebten Operette Die Fledermaus (der deutsche Titel lautet sinnigerweise Fledermaus ‘55) im geteilten Nachkriegs-Wien spielt zwar in schönster unrealistischer Hein-Heckroth-Ausstattung (die allerdings jetzt auch nicht so überzeugend als das aufgeteilte Wien rüberkommt wie beispielsweise das echte Wien in The Third Man), Anton Walbrook ist bewährt charmant, Mel Ferrer hübsch und forsch, Anneliese Rothenberger gibt sich die Ehre, all die schönen Kunstzutaten, und vieles ist wirklich sehr niedlich. Es ist aber insofern etwas unbefriedigend, als Komödie ihnen einfach nicht recht zu liegen scheint. Braucht aber möglicherweise auch eine zweite Sichtung, jetzt wo ich weiß, worauf ich mich eingelassen habe, und mit Champagner.

[manganic-malaria]

Black Narcissus, 1947

[idlesuperstar]

Surely THE MOST heterosexual scene in all of British cinema, in all its restored (finally!) glory - Anton Walbrook as Dr Falke dressing Michael Redgrave as Col Eisenstein in Powell & Pressburger’s Oh...Rosalinda!! [1955]

[absolut-maenaiac]

Hein Heckroth