Swing Shift (1984)

(On Cable TV, January 2022) Sometimes mentioned as the movie during which Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn fell in love, Swing Shift is frustratingly inconsistent to watch. It tries to do a little bit of everything, but in doing so seems to be ignoring what makes it special. I was most intrigued by the WW2 home-front aspect of the film, as women sign up to work in airplane factories while their husbands are off to fight the war—there’s some predictable sexism, but also a bit of comedy, empowerment, self-actualization and further drama as their work becomes redundant at the end of the conflict and they’re let go from “the best job they’re ever had.”  That aspect of the film, while not completely new, is intriguing and could have supported an entire film. Nice production values, contemporary attitudes and some colourful supporting characters do help in creating a WW2 film more credible than those made during WW2 itself. Alas, there’s also a far more conventional love triangle that ends up swallowing the rest of the picture in its conventional maw—whenever the film threatens to get too interesting, Hawn and Russell (with some support from Ed Harris) go back under the spotlight for material that feels perfunctory compared to the rest of the film. Swing Shift’s production history tells us that the original script is not what ended up on screen—the picture was wrestled away from director Jonathan Demme late in production, with half an hour of new material shot to emphasize the love triangle. The result is a disappointment in more ways than one—it doesn’t end with a climax as much as a return to disappointing normalcy for the lead character, and little payoff for her colleagues on the assembly line. The feminist sensibilities of the film seem smothered in a decided unthreatening romantic triangle with an underwhelming finish. Much of what happened between the first version and the released one is described in detail in a rather wonderful Sight and Sound article, but you don’t need to understand how the original cut was less conventional to be frustrated by what’s on screen. But, hey—there’s Hawn and Russell are the beginning of their still-ongoing relationship, so at least there’s that.