"Red Shoes" character names & Bobby Helpmann

[David]

Why is the Anton Walbrook character named Lermontov? why the reference to the writer? Lermontov himself was sort of a Beethoven in politics & personality, & not at all like the imperious Boris Lermontov in TRS. I can think of some similarities between the protagonist in "A Hero of Our Time" & some of the poetry, like "The Demon," but those seem relatively tenuous connections.

Also, was Bobby Helpmann's character, Boleslawsky, a nod to the old director who died in the late 1930s? The three-strip Technicolor of "Garden of Allah" reminds me of the florid Bohemian-kitschy effusions of color in TRS. Was Powell influenced by Boleslawski?

Interesting hearing Moira Shearer on the commentary say that Helpmann wasn't much of a dancer. I had heard others say that about this little imp (whom somebody once called "Iago"), but it's just so weird that this mainstay of Sadler's Wells & other troupes -- who reveled in the weird side of ballet lore & who came back to movies after "The Red Shoes" with the greatest ballet film ever made, "The Tales of Hoffmann," for the same director -- would actually be a bad dancer. When you watch him in TRS, especially up against Shearer & Massine, you can see, even if you're not all boned up on your ballet, that he's just not very great. But he had a weird little face & a sprite's body & he helped infuse these movies with that Hoffmannesque shadow.