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The Red Shoes, the classic 1948 (released in the U.S. in 1948 in a very limited release, and then in a wider release in 1949, and then in a very wide release in 1950!) Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger English dance ballet romantic melodrama ("... Dance she did, and dance she must between her two loves."; "There has never been a motion picture like 'The Red Shoes'"; "There have never been reviews as wonderful as these..."; "Winner of three Academy Awards"; "Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger"; nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award; based on the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen) starring Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring, Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann, Ludmilla Tcherina, and Leonide Massine ("The part of The Shoemaker created and danced by Leonide Massine"). Note that Shearer did not want to make this movie, because of how difficult it would be for her to perform the many dance scenes, and it took Powell and Pressburger more than a year to convince her to make it! Also note that this movie won Academy Awards for art direction and music scoring, and it is widely considered to be one of the movies that made the best use of three-strip Technicolor. Also note that this movie includes a scene of the dancers outdoors by tall buildings, and it was too costly to film that scene outdoors, so that scene was done with the judicious use of matte paintings!
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Important Added Info: Note that this is a pair of "comparison photographs", which shows a candid image of the set of this movie as it actually appeared during a key scene, and then a second image of the same scene with a matte painting overlaid over part of the scene!

This pair of photographs show the constructed set and the final shot after the addition of the matte painting, this shot being from one of the memorable dance sequences with the partially constructed set extended by matte artists Ivor Beddoes, Joseph Natanson, Les Bowie and Judy Jordan at Shepperton Studios, London, England.

What is a matte painting? It is a special visual effects element used in the production of motion pictures enabling filmmakers to add environments to films which are not possible to achieve practically on location or in a studio. A fixture in filmmaking since the birth of cinema common uses for matte paintings include the extension of landscapes and structures which would be either impossible to build or prohibitively expensive and time consuming, they are also useful in the creation of fantasy pictures to portray situations which do not exist in reality giving the filmmaker free reign to bring his vision to the screen, these paintings are combined with live action footage to produce impressive shots which when perfectly executed can trick the audience in to believing what they seeing is real.

We were consigned twelve "matching pairs" of these comparison photographs, which came from the estate of an English special effects artist who collected them from colleagues in the effects industry who worked on these movies including Les Bowie with whom he served as an apprentice at Bowie Films during the 1950's & 1960's. They clearly show the painted additions which have taken place at the hands of the various artists involved and would have originated from the Technicolor laboratory in West Drayton, London, England which was located in close proximity to the major British studios, it was here where these matte shots were processed. We have never before auctioned even one pair of these comparison photographs, and we were consigned twelve pairs, which are in twelve separate auctions!

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