ACCUSATION: Outdated fluff.
DEFENSE: What a feeling!
Let’s get the undebatable out of the way first.
Time has not been kind to Flashdance (1983, Paramount Pictures).
I’m not just talking about the leg-warmers and torn sweatshirts, the Giorgio Moroder score or the completely implausible, while somewhat sexist looker in a welder’s helmet by day plot-line. I’m talking about the “they don’t make like that anymore” factor. The movie signaled a new era for Hollywood creatives that would click completely with broad audiences. Something of a rarity in the disposable niche releases from studios today.
Flashdance is a two part Underdog story – that of the movie’s success and its plot within.
It’s almost hard to believe it in retrospect, but here’s a film that that went through numerous stops and starts, studio ownership, directors, actors, producers and even running times before it went on to become the third highest grossing of its year. It launched the careers of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer as well as Peter Giber and Jon Peters, not to mention brought huge attention to director Adrian Lyne (who would go on to direct Fatal Attraction), Writer Lynda Obst (who would go on to produce Adventures in Babysitting) and Jennifer Beals (who remains the main face of the movie in our collective unconsciousness).
In the movie, we begin slowly following the silhouetted actions of our heroine Alex Owens to the drawn out synth pop notes of the Oscar winning theme song. Every crafted shot from the opening fade in the streets of Pittsburgh to the ending finale set in a dance studio is perfectly lit and lensed by the late cinematographer Donald Peterman, who was nominated for the Oscar for this film. There’s an unmistakable quality to his work, and you can see it in other 80s Paramount releases like She’s Having a Baby and Star Trek IV.
So, why does the film not get the same respect as other successful music dramas like Grease or Dirty Dancing What’s with the pop cultural amnesia?
There’s a sequence in which Alex explains that she can “see the music,” to explain the craft of her dancing. It’s a corny line and a corny scene, and I admit, what is wrong with Flashdance is the dialogue (its script received a Razzie nomination and universal disdain from critics, including real hate from Roger Ebert ). Granted, you won’t find many merits in its paint-by-numbers plot and cliche characters.
What saves the film, and connected it to such a large audience in 1983 was emotion over substance. You so easily, and so quickly, fall in love with Beals’ Alex and you want to root for her. Director Andrian Lyne takes the lowbrow script and delivers performances, visuals and, of course, music that all work hand in hand with the “what a feeling” mantra. Audiences flocked to theaters for repeat viewings, to record stores to buy the soundtrack, and to the mall to copy the Flashdance fashion. A cultural sensation was born.
Ironically, Flashdance served as a model if not in plot, but in formula, for even bigger successes from the same producers, shaping and morphing the landscape of popular cinema. Beverly Hills Cop replaced the drama with action and laughs, but kept the high energy editing, crisp cinematography and pop soundtrack. And don’t forget Top Gun even superseded that.
The lineage of the modern pre-pack Blockbuster can not exclude Flashdance, yet it also hasn’t been repeated. It was something purely of the time. Not counting similar output from Bruckheimer that combined Underdog tales with popular soundtracks like Dangerous Minds, the only true attempt to bring another Flashdance to screen was the quickly forgotten Coyote Ugly.
At this time there are no plans for a relaunch, remake or rerelease. In fact, tame by today’s standards, the R rated film is a staple of VH-1 and Lifetime afternoon movie time-fillers.
BONUS: GEEK TRIVIA
What do zombies and flashdancers have in common?
The ice skating rink on which Jeanie falls was filmed at Monroeville Mall (locale of the same skating rink used in George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978).
