"The effort here is to domesticate ballet, to remove the taint of European decadence; most of the characters are so heartland ordinary that they disinfect one's imagination."-Pauline Kael
Melodrama and documentary realism mix about as well as oil and water. But, if a film is nominated for eleven Oscars, and garners no wins, should it be forgotten by history? I don't care much for the Academy Awards ceremony, nor do I see validation for the winners because they won a statue. But it is necessary to remember what was popular at the time, more so than the contemporary box office returns rendered obsolete by modern inflation. If the Turning Point had eleven nominations, it was part of the zeitgeist. Ballet must have been all the rage in 1977, especially for art house audiences that were sick of the oversaturation of Star Wars in the media.
The Turning Point sees Anne Bancroft as the Prima Ballerina of the New York Ballet Company. She is aging, and senses she will soon be on the chopping block. When the company goes on tour to Oklahoma, she comes across her former rival. Shirley Maclaine was more likely to be the next Prima Ballerina, but became pregnant, and left to start a family. The late actress Gena Rowlands reminisced: "In those days, if you got married, you had children and quit what you were doing. I wanted to be an actress bad enough that I would forego the comfort of love. I was going to be very careful." Luckily, Maclaine has little to be regretful of: exhaustion can be seen lined into Bancroft's face; with her going into forced retirement, she feels her endless performances and numerous awards ring hollow. Maclaine's husband (Tom Skerritt) is also a faithful simp, and there even seems to be no tension in the family. Even her daughter (Leslie Browne) is going off to become a ballerina in the New York company, as an apprentice to Bancroft. Maclaine and Bancroft bicker slightly, reminiscing on how their lives could have easily been swapped. And Maclaine is much more tolerable here than in Terms of Endearment. But she is almost too subtle, because the conclusion feels like the end of a sitcom. They yell, they fall over, they laugh, they look forward to the future; cue Executive Producer freezeframe.
The absence of tension is baffling. Even one scene where Maclaine's daughter breaks up with a promising Soviet dancer, gets drunk, and performs off key in a performance of "Black Swan" is not noticed by anyone in the audience. In fact, instead of being dismissed, she is promoted to the lead in "Sleeping Beauty." This is also one of the few 1970's films that does not portray New York as a post-apocalyptic dystopia. In fact, Manhattan looks closer to a liberal paradise; all the citizens walking around, reading The New Yorker. You can tell all these decades later that the auditorium Bancroft and Browne are performing in will soon be remodeled for Andrew Lloyd Webber mega productions.
Looking for Mr. Goodbar and The Turning Point would play well as a double feature. Both are artifacts of life in 1977 New York City, before the blackout, when experimentation was beginning to creep into high society; though The Turning Point was not dumped on Youtube for free. I had to pay fourteen dollars for a region-free disc imported from China; with Chinese lettering on every part of the box art. The pan and scan quality was stretched to make for more abstract coloring of hazy blues and dim pinks. I don't know what it was supposed to look like originally, but the ballet performances can be pretty hypnotic, even for those who have no background in ballet.
Rating: ** 1/2 stars out of four
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