Cardiff reportedly didn't care for ballet until Michael Powell forced him to visit Covent Garden multiple times per week in preparation for this film. The cinematographer subsequently became a huge admirer of the art, which comes through loud and clear in this masterpiece of color and motion, which has as its exquisite centerpiece a nearly twenty-minute ballet sequence. Cardiff's wonderfully fluid camera and lustrous Technicolor photography are every bit the equal of his two previous Powell-Pressburger collaborations-and they perfectly capture the story's fairy-tale origins. The film follows the trajectory of young English ballerina Victoria Page (Moira Shearer), whose tremendous talent and ambition find their match in producer Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) and composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring), with whom she collaborates on a production of Hans Christian Andersen's The Red Shoes. Soon, a blossoming romance threatens the relationship among the three-and tragedy grows inevitable.