Influential classic, not just for its day, but still flawed.

Rating: Null/10 (31 October 2006)

Spoilers! Very influential film, at the time, about a PA girl from Altoona who grows up to be a stripper/ballet dancer, with a personality so split it looks like a different woman doing the dancing - but, of course . . .
The stand in for Beals, Marine Jahan, is not listed in the credits. She's listed here on IMDb, but only if you know enough to scroll down to the bottom of the "other crew" list. No mention is made of her in any other on-line store for the vid or CD! From that, it's as if she never existed. In addition, supposedly another woman performed as the bike rider, and a man performed the flips (according to a couple of Usenet messages I found). From that standpoint, clearly Cynthia Rhodes, who later starred with Travolta in a less successful dance film, and then later with Swayze in Dirty Dancing, steals the show as 'Tina Tech'. But part of the criticism of the film might be that the dance numbers seem almost sparingly employed, that more of Rhodes could have been written in, and that the courtship of Nouri and Beals almost drags at some points.
On the other hand, to call the women strippers, while true, misses the point of the sort of acts found at Mawby's, as opposed to the evil Zanzibar. These are virtuoso dance interpretations cut into the degrading ethos of a strip club. This is Jezebel in a hundred variations, doing her belly dance in the tent, with uncluttered pre-drum n bass dance music and one note 'crying' guitars as 'mood enhancers'. It's the music video, as from Easy Rider, and many films before, in parts. And here it's just in parts, too. The cleverer it gets, the more pretentious it seems, as with 'Beals' final number against the white tile wall. Even Rhodes' performance seems a little silly. And the water splash on Beals has been parodied so often that to review the film, today, one is tempted to call it silly, as well. At the time, it wasn't a cliché. And what Rhodes did seemed something new, as well. Beals, in a recent interview, very widely copied to various sites on the net, remarks that she saw the influence of this little film in young women all over the world, at the time, not only in some newfound desire to become a dancer, but that trendy meant torn 'Alex' garb and the suggestion of good life for a young girl in a dust choked, ear-shattering mill or machine shop.
The film makers attempted to be true to steel town, no doubt. And there are many shots of the dank atmosphere, but also the almost cozy mill, welding there, and machine shops covered over in dust and grit and mostly unused, as the light streams in again in an almost comforting, artistic fashion. It's cold, more than dusty. But it's difficult to convey that on screen - without icicles or snow banks, perhaps. So it's really, kind of warm. And it's still, when walking through the rooms of grinders, when frolicking in the abandoned mill. And the 'dancer's loft doesn't seem so disgusting as Nouri's character seems to suggest when first invited in. The mood set is one of quiet and gentle isolation, perhaps in some sense to suggest that of the dancer alone before an audience. Or that might be unintentional. And so Beals comments on the effects of the film, are understandable. The young women saw what was on screen, whatever the film makers otherwise intended.
The plot isn't so much filler as a number of key scenes in the 'dancer's life, from the Zanzibar owner's assault in the parking lot, to Jeanie's falls on the ice and subsequent fall to the Zanzibar, literally on her back, to the radiator breaking as 'Izod'/Ritchie bids his goodbye, for the moment, and so on. The scenes are carefully designed and lit. There's a music to much of this non-dance filler that seems to hold up perhaps better than some of the so often parodied dance numbers, from now over 20 years ago. (In real life, the actress portraying Jeanie unfortunately died shortly afterward, I believe from a rupture strangely similar to that which in real life also killed the woman singing that very song as Jeanie ice dances).
All the actors command the screen very well, if not necessarily with much depth. It is difficult to believe that Beals is a welder, for ex. Yes, it's possible - maybe. To the witness on the stand - but you DO allow for the remote possibility, do you not Mr . . And as a remote possibility, sure. The film almost works because of that 'fantasy' aspect, where the women who hang with Alex are all strikingly beautiful. That's already a step away from any reality. Then there's the question of how did the former ballerina and Ziegfield dancer, Alex's/Beal's teacher, train the stripper to be a ballerina? Her audition before the panel is the sort of heavy, bouncy thing the strippers at Mawby's would be famous for, not what someone applying for the city ballet would perform. And of course, as mentioned first here, it is just annoying and distracting to see the noticeably different appearance of the stand-in, Jahan, from Beals. This surely was a complaint of the film, even at the time. And it's still something that takes one out of the story, and back to the reality of just watching some movie. Beals may have fit the role of doe-eyed manipulator for this film. But to see her, and then another 'Darren', back and forth from scene to scene, is what perhaps hurts even more than the rest.