Shoes and Fairytales 2

More things about shoes.  The oldest recorded version of Cinderella comes from China.  Many of these tales originated in the East and travelled down the Silk Road (along with the Black Death).  Small feet were seen as a sign of refinement and beauty in China - apparently there was a concubine with tiny feet in the Han Dynasty,  who started the fashion which lead to the horrendous custom of binding women's feet.  Cinderella had small, elegant feet compared to her stepsisters, who cut off their toes in some versions to  squash their feet into her glass slipper.  Messy - and visible.  So here are some pictures of the incredibly tiny shoes (about 4" or 10 cm) and the effect binding had on a woman's foot.

Apparently women could still walk and work the fields with bound feet (it was a practice that was taken up by rich and poor alike) but it was difficult to balance on the soles of the tiny shoes, and women developed a swaying gait called the Lotus Gait that was thought to be alluring.  Manchu women were forbidden to bind their feet by order of the Emperor, but a fashion for 'Flower bowl' shoes developed, which effectively made them walk with tiny steps in the same swaying manner.  I have seen examples of these shoes before in the V&A and wondered about them, so this research has filled that gap.

The Last Girl Standing Theory.

We were talking about the last girl standing in horror films, the theory being that the good innocent girl beats the baddie - virtue triumphs.  This reminded me of an Ealing comedy that was shown over Christmas, The Lady Killers, staring Alex Guiness, Herbert Lom and Peter Sellers, and Katie Johnson as the eccentric Mrs Louisa Wilberforce.

In a nutshell, a group of gangsters rent an upstairs room, pretending to be an amateur string quartet rehersing, and in reality are planning a bank robbery.  When Mrs Wilberforce discovers the money, she insists it must be returned, and the gang draw straws to decide who will be the Lady Killer.  Mayhem ensues as Mrs Wilberforce snoozes quietly in front of the fire. 

My favourite scenes are the tea-party, where the gangsters are forced to behave well in front of Mrs Wilberforces' friends, and the washing up scene where they all meekly stand around with tea towels, drying up bone china whilst Mrs Wilberforce tells them off.  An oldie but a goodie.

Shoes and Fairytales

One of my favourite Powell Pressburger films - The Red Shoes - staring Moira Shearer.  The original folk tale is a mataphor for addiction - a young peasant girl finds a pair of red shoes, puts them on and dances in them.  After a while she wants to rest, but the shoes carry on dancing of their own accord, and dance and dance untill she dies of exhaustion, her feet a bloody mess.  I particularly like Moira Shearers stage makeup in the above still.  Identifying with the girl in the folk tale, and torn between her dance career and lover, her red ballet shoes dance her to a tragic end.

The Powell Pressburger collaboration produced some beautiful films.  There is a scene in Black Narcissus, a film about a group of nuns losing their sanity in the steamy Hymalayas, where Kathleen Byron renounces her vows and puts on some lipstick.  The Monstrouse female going mad.  The link is to the trailer.  Both films are gloriously technicolour and old fashioned, but still fabulouse to watch.

I was going to research truly the monstrous shoes of Chineese women with bound feet, but Red Shoes will do for the moment.

Bluebeard!

It's a long time since we looked at fairy tales, but I have been doing some (gruesome) reading about the life and times of Gilles de Rais - "The Real Bluebeard" by Jean Benedetti (Sutton publishing 2003).  Not for the fainthearted, and yet another child murderer - but one who's rank and wealth gave him both the opportunity to kill and immunity from the justice system.

I found this intriguing image from Georges Melies 1901 Bluebeard film.  It was with a blog article on films about Bluebeard at the link below.

In (one of) the original versions of the story, Bluebeard hangs his ex's by their hair in the cellar, and there seems to be a similar fascination with hair in other tales - Rapunzel being the most obviouse, but Jack the Giant Killer also finds the Giant's wives hanging by their hair too.http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/tag/bluebeard/

And here's the link to the film itself - the scene is about 5mins in.

There are some quite gruesome things about shoes in fairytales as well... another blog.

Monstrous Females 3

Myra Hindley by Marcus Harvey.

Black and white image of Myra Hindley, the Moors Murderer by Marcus Harvey.  The image is made up of handprints, using the plaster cast of a small child's hand.

Myra Hindley was the monstrous woman of my childhood.  I can remember her photograph appearing sporadically in the papers as the possibility of parole was mentioned.  

Monstrous Females 2

Sarah Malcolm painted by W. Hogarth 1733

Ilustration as a Monster.  The etching is of a painting of Sarah Malcolm, a 22year old Laundress who worked in London in 1733.   Sarah Malcolm - and accomplices- returned to a house where she worked as a laundry maid and strangled the two elderly ladies who lived there, and slit the throat of their 19 yr old maid.  Sarah herself may not have been the strangler, but the way Hogarth has emphasised her beefy arms and hands somehow suggests she could have done so.

The gap between conviction and execution was always brief, and Hogarth hurridly sketched and painted Sarah.  The aim was to produce an affordable etching (6d, the price of a newpaper) as soon as possible after the execution.  This particular etching is a mirror image of the painting and was done so to complement another etching of an executed man, Jack Sheppard.  It was thought to increase the etching's commercial interest by turning the print into a matching pair.  Commercial art at it's most monstrous, commemorating death as a public spectacle.

Monstrous Females 1

Sleepy Hollow - Tim Burton

Scene where the headless horseman emerges from the Tree of the dead.  The moment where the hoof and the horse's nose pushes out from amongst the severed heads is really cleverly done.  Sleepy Hollow also has one of my favourite female characters.  Miranda Richardson is a stepmother, witch, murderess and manipulator of the Headless horseman.

Lady Van Tassel played by Miranda Richardson