Tempo di swing

An easy-to-watch look at the Rosie the Riveter culture during WWII, "Swing Shift" is nothing special but passes. Goldie Hawn is her usual self as housewife Kay Walsh, who goes to work in the factories after her husband Jack (Ed Harris) goes off to fight in the war. If anything weakens the movie, it's something that we only recognize in the 21st century: the fact that Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell met on the set (Russell plays her new love interest). Since then, stories of movie stars meeting on movie sets - and possible breaking up marriages - have become so commonplace that it makes our eyes roll.

But the movie itself is pretty interesting. Maybe it's not any kind of masterpiece, but it's fun to watch. Also starring Christine Lahti, Fred Ward and Holly Hunter. Jonathan Demme was certainly demonstrating the talent that he would later bring to "Silence of the Lambs", "Philadelphia" and "Beloved".

It's 1941 Santa Monica. Kay Walsh (Goldie Hawn) is happily married. Her fisherman husband Jack (Ed Harris) enlists after Pearl Harbor. Kay gets a job at the aircraft plant despite Jack's objections. Their lounge singer neighbor Hazel (Christine Lahti) is tired of her manager Archibald 'Biscuits' Touie (Fred Ward) and doesn't like the Walshes either who often snicker at her. Eventually, the two women become best of friends at the sexist plant on the swing shift from four to midnight. Kay starts to fall for her supervisor trumpet player Mike 'Lucky' Lockhart (Kurt Russell).

He's a player hound-dogging a married woman. She doesn't come off that well either. There has to be a higher degree of douchness from Jack to excuse her cheating on him. He is a male chauvinist but not necessarily worst than everybody else including Lucky. As a rom-com, it's very awkward. I really couldn't take the bad romance. For this to work, this has to be a darker drama. All the lightness has to go. Goldie Hawn is the wrong person to go there. There is a wrong tone to the movie. I don't know which version I saw although I suspect it's not the director's cut.

WWII star-vehicle for Goldie Hawn, here cast as a Rosie the Riveter-type who goes to work in an airplane-parts factory after her husband reports for duty. Poor beginning and hastily-filmed conclusion redeemed somewhat by bright moments in the middle. Hawn seems to realize she's being upstaged by Christine Lahti (as a "tramp" who lives in the same housing complex) and the final moments flip-flop trying to restructure the film's focus in Goldie's favor (check out that final shot). There's nothing wrong with that--Goldie's a wonderful presence and she's very appealing in parts of the movie--but her character as written just isn't all that interesting. As the men vying for Hawn's affections, Kurt Russell and Ed Harris are handsome and serviceable. As for Lahti, she indeed shines, obviously relishing the chance to play against type. I just wish the interaction between Lahti and Hawn had been explored with more depth, but it isn't. This is the fault of the screenwriter (the non-existent "Rob Morton", who is really Bo Goldman, Ron Nyswaner, and Nancy Dowd, here doing a WWII variation on "Coming Home", which Dowd also had a hand in) and also Goldie Hawn, who reportedly fought with director Jonathan Demme over control of the piece. They are all to blame for the slim box-office receipts "Swing Shift" struggled to bring in. **1/2 from ****

"Swing Shift," director Jonathan Demme's sensitive story about women who went to war with a rivet gun, begins the night before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Living in modest California bungalows, Kay Walsh (Goldie Hawn) and her husband, Jack (Ed Harris) live a simple and enjoyable life. Everything is suddenly changed with the Sunday afternoon announcement of the devastating assault on the Pacific Fleet and the Army Air Corps bases in Hawaii.

Jack enlists immediately as do many of the couple's neighbors and friends. Alone, bored and motivated by genuine patriotism Kay goes to work at an aircraft plant that builds the tough, reliable SBD carrier-borne dive bomber. She strikes up, awkwardly at first, a friendship with neighbor Hazel (Christine Lahti), a woman with a nightclub-owning boyfriend. Jack had made some nasty not sotto voce cracks about her before he left for war.

Kay takes to the assembly line and enjoys being productive. But she's also lonely - it was a long war. Her "leadman," a sort of foreman, is "Lucky" (Kurt Russell). He and she begin a friendship that culminates in one of those wartime affairs that happened very often and is realistically portrayed by Hawn who is torn between marital fidelity and loneliness (and, obviously, dealing with separation-enforced abstinence).

Lucky is a 4-F. That meant he was "physically, mentally or morally unfit" for military service. In his case - phew - it's a latent heart condition.

The affair goes through various stages, punctuated by Jack's surprise arrival on a forty-eight hour pass. Whatever suspecting his wife is having it on with Lucky may do to him, he's also both bemused and confused that as a "leadman," (she's been promoted) she earns more in a factory than he does serving in the Fleet. Harris's portrayal is of a man on the cusp of a social change he feels but can't really identify.

There are a lot of ups and downs in this story but Hawn and Lahti in particular deliver strongly emotional and convincing performances. This was long before women could rise to general officer or flag officer rank and assume major wartime responsibilities. Hawn is Rosie the Riveter, the patriotic but largely uneducated and unskilled patriotic American female. There were tens of thousands of such women employed in every type of industrial work.

Obviously the absence of husbands and the surfeit of available albeit older or not totally fit men aided the initiation of extramarital affairs. But "Swing Shift" also subtly conveys the reality that the women who went to work were empowered by the global conflict. Despite an ending that affirms the women's promise and duty to relinquish employment to returning veterans (the promise was unnecessary since both law and custom insured their rapid dismissal), American women were fundamentally changed by the liberating reality of serving their country by working (often for the first time) and earning money. The political, economic and social reverberations would be felt for decades. "Swing Shift" is fine entertainment but it's also a chronicle of an important aspect of America's Home Front.

A fine movie. Available on DVD in a good transfer with no real special features.

9/10.

A quiet first-rate film that has Goldie Hawn at a factory to produce military goods during World War II while husband Ed Harris is off fighting the war. Hawn would have never thought that she would fall for co-worker Kurt Russell in this fine motion picture. Christine Lahti (Oscar-nominated) shines as another co-worker who has a bad reputation and Fred Ward gives another fine performance in a small supporting role. Directed by Jonathan Demme, "Swing Shift" is one of those diamonds in the rough from the 1980s. A good film. 4 stars out of 5.