Just another reason why Charlotte Higgins is awesome -- she's into Powell-Pressburger:
I find that I am lost to the film, every single time I see it, by the end of the opening sequence, in which a group of students burst through the entrance to the "gods" in the Royal Opera House then race up the stairs as if their very lives depended on it. They start to watch the ballet that unfolds before them with the kind of greed with which a condemned man might eat his last meal. It makes me cry, reliably, every time I see it, and I find I'm hard pressed to explain exactly why, except that it must chime profoundly with my own inarticulable feelings about the art I love.
Even if it really needs an actual cinema to be appreciated, the Criterion DVD is the right way to watch "The Red Shoes" at home.