Tempo di swing

"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.

Nice period feeling and an interesting premise that doesn't get a lot of attention, women's role in the workplace during WWII. They should have focused on that and left the weak love story out and would had a better film. The problem is that Goldie's and Russell's characters are not really people you can feel much empathy for, she's spoiled and selfish and he's really rather a jerk whereas the more interesting and relatable characters played by Ed Harris and Christine Lahti are kept too much in the background. Christine Lahti however steals every second she's on screen apparently pre-release tinkering cut some of her best work to throw the spotlight more Goldie's way, perhaps costing her a best supporting actress Oscar although she was nominated. You'll spot Holly Hunter early in her career as one of the factory girls. Not without its merits and attractions but less than it could have been.

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 ****

I really did like this movie. There's a lot to like. It's the beginning of World War II, and all the men are being called to the Army. Goldie Hawn and Ed Harris are a typical American couple thus pulled apart. Goldie gets a Rosie the Riveter job, where she meets Kurt Russel, a 4F plant foreman, and the rest is history.

Swing Shift was directed by Jonathan Demme, of Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia fame, and if this one is a little lighter, it was also a lot earlier in his career. Holly Hunter appears in a very small supporting role, but gives it her star-quality best. Christine Lahti is magnificent as the single neighbor who befriends Goldie at the factory even though she and her husband were cruel to her before the war changed everyone's lives. Fred Ward was already becoming old hat, but he, like the rest of the film, ends up being likeable and thoroughly enjoyable.

Hawn and Russell met on the set and have been together ever since. Maybe the excitement of their real-life romance drained the spark from their on-screen version. This could have been a really moving story of a woman who falls in love while her husband is off to war, but ends up showing us a couple of bump-buddies killing time till their real lives resume. Perhaps that was the point.

Ed Harris is perfectly cast as the common man trying to keep his marriage together in the face of all that life throws in its way. There is a famous scene, in which Ed, wearing nothing but a bath towel, plops into a floppy chair with a cold beer. The resulting bounce proves that Harris is one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, and explains why this charming little tale will never be on DVD.

Swing Shift is a nice period piece, and provides an amusing, if not entirely accurate, view of the tumultous years in the middle of the last century when the entire world went to war.

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".