Magnificent Obsession

But for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s landmark 1948 film The Red Shoes, the world might not know the name Martin Scorsese. A fable about ballet, you ask, influenced the auteur of Taxi Driver and Goodfellas? Yes. Because it’s also about movement and light and color — the kind of breathtaking color (gloriously lensed by Technicolor-anointed cinematographer Jack Cardiff) that could elevate the storytelling possibilities of cinema in the imagination of a sickly kid from Queens watching “Million Dollar Movie” on TV (who ultimately chose filmmaking over the priesthood). Every frame of The Red Shoes — about the ballet prodigy Victoria Page (the luminous Moira Shearer), torn between her love for the composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring) and the Svengali-like thrall of the impresario Lermontov (Anton Walbrook) — vibrates with color, its magnificence amplified in a newly restored print presented for one week only at the Tivoli Cinemas (4050 Pennsylvania, 913-383-7756).

Aug. 6-12, 2010