Goyim on the West Side

Rating: Null/10 (9 March 2006)

Watching "Ice Castles" reminded me of this, so I revisited it.
Two things: The first is the modern problem of how to incorporate dance in a story. In the 30s you could just pretend the movie was a stage show with the players doing their entertainment thing. Coming out of that was a long tradition of movies where the characters were in show business, so we'd have some usually trivial story wrapping the shows.
Over time, the interplay between the inner show and the outer became important and nuanced. At one end is the play reflecting some larger insight into the "real" life that surrounds it. By merging the audience within with the audience in the movie theater, the story becomes more real.
In modern times, the screenwriter's problem -- when they want to have dance -- is how to incorporate it into the story. It isn't easy at all, unless you turn it into a sports movie where the dance (or singing) sequences are part of some grand competition that is also a make it or break it life test. That's lazy. Just lazy.
Dirty Dancing was a clever solution, since become something of a formula. Dancing is sex, pure and simple. Dance as a seduction, paired dancing that is. There is the slightest hint of a test here, where our little baby has to fill in for the regular partner. (She has to fill in because that partner is pregnant, as if we needed yet another reminder what it is all about.) But that event isn't so much a test as a gift, a gift of her body.
All in all, seeing this again after 20 years, it doesn't seem all that dirty now even though the youth and plainness of our girl is still striking.
The second interesting thing about this was remarked on when new. But it is so much more obvious when browsing the DVD extras. Baby is a Jew, as is her family and all the guests. The writer was trying to evoke her own memories of a lost era (the hotelier bemoans that loss at the end of the movie).
The setting is a Jewish resort in the Catskills where the owner brings in the right kind of boys for waitstaff in order to screw the patron's daughters. There's a longstanding joke in the Jewish community about how tepid and joyless they are, and that's pinged often here.
Meanwhile, some of the lower class staff, goyim, have a West Side Story sort of existence, endlessly rutting and dancing. Joy and whooping.
Our Baby is the daughter of the doctor who saved the owner's life, so he has blessed her by providing his own blood to awaken her. This poor kid is played by someone who had a name for himself playing stereotypical Jews. Large noses play an embarrassing part here in identifying key characters and this kid has a comically prosthetic one.
No surprise that she prefers the "other" class, and much is made of her father's disapproval. It is because he is not a Jew, like the boy designated for the other daughter (who dutifully plans her deflowering).
No one doubts that Baby will never see Johnny again, will join the Peace corps, fix her nose (as Jennifer has) and be happy in some conventional future after having her two flings.
Its a sad movie in many ways, but if you want an old dance movie, please choose this one over "Flashdance" and "Saturday Night Fever." Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.