From Cinderella to Carrie Bradshaw, from Dorothy to Vivian Ward, onscreen characters have long been obsessed with shoes, with a pair of pumps (or trainers or ballet slippers or boots) acting as either a plot device or a significant and key item of costume. Often it's both, with the shoes influencing the look and the story of a film. Cinderella would still be a lowly oppressed charwoman without those glass slippers, Dorothy would still be stuck in Oz if she hadn't clicked her ruby heels together and Carrie Bradshaw might still be – whisper it – unmarried if Big hadn't finally proposed with a pair of Manolos.   

Click the gallery to see the 20 most important pairs of shoes in cinema history, the shoes that have killed men, seduced men, transformed women's lives, the shoes that have come from the future and transported protagonists back to their past.  

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