They Shoot Horses, Don't They (1969)
This is almost a mainstream experimental film, coming out of the New Hollywood transformation, and it has a huge reputation. It centers around the basically true events of a typical late-1920s dance marathon, with contestants dancing (and resting at times) for weeks straight (four or five weeks wasn't unusual). Naturally, contestants freak out and get obsessive and generally push their limits, and that ultimately is what the movie portrays.
I found it a bore. I like Sydney Pollack's approach to movies, in general, and he's directed some real gems. I can tolerate Jane Fonda, too, and she is an irritable, pushy young woman in this one, pretty convincing. There are other characters with similar selfish, and increasingly tired, attitudes, and by half way through you realize that it's a downer movie with nearly everyone snarly and mean and deceptive. By the end, with the great climax hinted at a couple times along the way, you expect and get the culmination of all that.
But it's a pretty linear experience, almost entirely shot in the gymnasium serving as a dance hall. The spectators are barely mentioned (and there are generally very few). The bands providing the dance music are dull (and maybe incorrect for the times--not only is there an all-Black group, which might have been included, but one of them is a mixed race group, and this isn't a barrier crossed until the late 1930s, a decade later). People's attitudes struck me as more 1960s than 1920s, with women openly crude and aggressive, and maybe this is my own shortcoming (I see the aggressive, successful women in Reds as more accurate, for whatever reason).
Mostly there is nothing much happening except a kind of petty competition between two women, and with two men half caring and just tagging along. And everyone getting weary. It's a spectacle, for sure, but imagine watching it for a month? And then squeezing that boredom into a two hour movie, narrative one liner with a strained script. Loaded with awards and praise, but not here.
This is almost a mainstream experimental film, coming out of the New Hollywood transformation, and it has a huge reputation. It centers around the basically true events of a typical late-1920s dance marathon, with contestants dancing (and resting at times) for weeks straight (four or five weeks wasn't unusual). Naturally, contestants freak out and get obsessive and generally push their limits, and that ultimately is what the movie portrays.
I found it a bore. I like Sydney Pollack's approach to movies, in general, and he's directed some real gems. I can tolerate Jane Fonda, too, and she is an irritable, pushy young woman in this one, pretty convincing. There are other characters with similar selfish, and increasingly tired, attitudes, and by half way through you realize that it's a downer movie with nearly everyone snarly and mean and deceptive. By the end, with the great climax hinted at a couple times along the way, you expect and get the culmination of all that.
But it's a pretty linear experience, almost entirely shot in the gymnasium serving as a dance hall. The spectators are barely mentioned (and there are generally very few). The bands providing the dance music are dull (and maybe incorrect for the times--not only is there an all-Black group, which might have been included, but one of them is a mixed race group, and this isn't a barrier crossed until the late 1930s, a decade later). People's attitudes struck me as more 1960s than 1920s, with women openly crude and aggressive, and maybe this is my own shortcoming (I see the aggressive, successful women in Reds as more accurate, for whatever reason).
Mostly there is nothing much happening except a kind of petty competition between two women, and with two men half caring and just tagging along. And everyone getting weary. It's a spectacle, for sure, but imagine watching it for a month? And then squeezing that boredom into a two hour movie, narrative one liner with a strained script. Loaded with awards and praise, but not here.