Dirty Dancing (1987)

 

Off-List: Dirty Dancing

It does not matter if you were a boy or a girl. Being a teenager in 1987 there is no way you could have missed “Dirty Dancing”. I was 14 years old when it came out and although adamant that this movie was NOT for me, the girls loved it, the music was played at EVERY teenage party we went to, and everybody ended up watching the movie anyway. The craze lasted for years, especially in a small town in Jutland, Denmark.

This also happened to be one of my wife’s favorite movies and as her birthday a few days ago was ruined by influenza anyway, we sat down to watch this instead.

Nobody puts Baby in the corner!

It is the early sixties, and the Houseman family is vacationing at the Kellerman’s resort in the Catskills. Daughter Frances “Baby” Houseman (Jennifer Grey) is soon bored with the inane entertainment of the place, but fascinated by the staffers, especially with the dance instructors. She becomes friendly with Penny (Cynthia Rhodes) and Johnny (Patrick Swayze) and although staffers are supposed to separate completely from the guests, clearly some do not. Robbie, one of the waiters happily sleeps with everybody including Baby’s sister and Penny. When Penny gets pregnant, no trifle affair in those days, it is Jenny who steps in to help. She borrows money from her father so Penny can see a doctor and takes her place at a dance show at a neighboring hotel. The latter is easier said than done and requires some intense dancing training by Johnny and Penny, all top-secret.

Of course everything explodes at some point, including some mistaken assumptions on the part of several key characters, but while tense enough not to be flat, it also resolves very satisfyingly and without too many ruffles as only an eighties romantic movie can get away with.

The attraction of “Dirty Dancing” comes from a happy marriage of several factors that come together very well in the movie. The first one being the coming-of-age story of Baby. She is a character interesting enough to get invested in. She is intelligent and curious and with enough integrity to understand what is right and what is not. She understands that she cannot just insult Neil Kellerman (Lonny Price) by turning him away, but she sees him immediately as a bozo. Baby is stirred by the thinly veiled sexuality of the dance raves the staffers are mounting and it becomes her lead into adulthood, partly by discovering her sexuality (of course), but also by the more cynical lessons of learning about the divides there exists between the haves and the have nots and between those with integrity and those without. These are life lessons that forces her to make adult choices herself.

The second reason is the dancing and the music. I admit flatly that dancing in movies in itself very rarely does anything for me, but this is an exception. Not so much the moves (although I suppose they are excellent), but because the dancing and the music is a catalyst for sexual liberation in the movie. The staffers experience something real and intense as opposed to the inane drivel of the vacation guests. A few of the dancers having sex in the corner would not have been out of place at all and the funny thing is that it works on us viewers. I feel invited into their party as does Baby and we certainly felt way that back in the late eighties even if we were a trifle young to fully understand it.

A third reason is that Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze is a fantastic match. Or at least feels like a fantastic match. Rumour has it that Grey initially had reservations working with Swayze, but if so, you do not see it at all. Swayze had at this point only played dramatic roles, but he was a trained dancer and, I think, surprised everybody by being born to play Johnny Castle.

“Dirty Dancing” was made on a shoestring budget, one of those movies that almost never happened, but ended up being a cultural icon that everybody from my generation would know, though not necessarily be honest enough to admit that they like. I really do not understand how “Dirty Dancing” did not get a slot on the List.

In Danish we called the movie “Snavset Dans”, but I think you need to be Danish to see that as being kind of sweet.