Articles & Texticles

Continuing a series about Art Directors in the British film industry up to 1948, when the book containing these articles was published.

This chapter deals with Hein Heckroth (1901 – 1970)

“Film is the folklore of the 20th century.”

He says of his experiments in the theatre that he has used every trick and every machine that he could lay hands on and has come to the conclusion that ‘all the machinery and all the money in the world will not help to make a good production if you have nothing to say-no idea’.

Heckroth is a man full of things to say and things worth listening to and it was welcome news to many that after working on costumes for ‘Caesar and Cleopatra’ and ‘Black Narcissus’ Micky Powell was making use of his talents as a designer for his ballet film ‘Red Shoes’.

All the images of Heckroth’s work were from his production sketches for The Red Shoes, 1948 (Trailer here)

(Click thumbnail images to enlarge)

Hein’s designs for The Red Shoes (1948) are preserved in MOMA, New York and at the BFI in London.

Personal note: I had the privilege, early on in my career, of working with one of the sketch artists of The Red Shoes, Ivor Beddoes

Whenever Hein Heckroth experiments with a new medium one can always expect exciting results. He belongs to the big group of German artists who came into being after the 1914-18 war and started an intellectual battle for new ideologies.

He says of his experiments in the theatre that he has used every trick and every machine that he could lay hands on and has come to the conclusion that ‘all the machinery and all the money in the world will not help to make a good production if you have nothing to say-no idea’.

Heckroth is a man full of things to say and things worth listening to and it was welcome news to many that after working on costumes for ‘Caesar and Cleopatra’ and ‘Black Narcissus’ Micky Powell was making use of his talents as a designer for his ballet film ‘Red Shoes’.

Hein Heckroth has a great reputation as a designer for the ballet, having joined forces with Kurt Jooss in 1924 starting a revolutionary movement against realism following on the theories of Gordon Craig and Adolph Appia.

Heckroth is always experimenting; he has many styles and is at home in many media, particularly oil on paper. As he would not be a slave to the conventions of a realistic theatre and its absurd limitations we can expect him to be the same about the film, a limitless medium confined to its present form of expression by a group of theatre owners who, like their predecessors in the theatre, think that they know what the public want.