Review: The Turning Point


Former ballet dancer Shirley MacLaine gets a chance to reunite with old colleagues and friends when her old New York ballet company comes to her town. Having left to marry fellow dancer Tom Skerritt and raise a family, MacLaine’s two kids are aspiring dancers, with daughter Leslie Browne a possible star in the making. Old friend (and rival) Anne Bancroft, the aging star of the group decides to take Browne under her wing, which starts to rub MacLaine the wrong way, as old wounds slowly bubble to the surface. Meanwhile, Browne (whose real-life parents’ story actual inspired this story) also takes up with young stud dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov (Both are former real-life dancers making their film debuts and were rewarded with Oscar nominations). Martha Scott plays the grand old lady of the company, and Anthony Zerbe turns up as an old acquaintance and orchestra conductor.

 

Nominated for 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture, but walking away empty handed is this 1977 ballet drama from director Herbert Ross (“Play it Again, Sam”, “The Last of Sheila”, “The Goodbye Girl”, “Footloose”) and screenwriter Arthur Laurents (“The Way We Were”), the latter of whom also produced. It’s got some terrific performances, but gives a soap opera treatment to a subject that I’m frankly not much interested in to begin with. Shirley MacLaine and especially Anne Bancroft are perfect (and perfectly matched), but the whole thing is clichéd and soapie. The moment Mikhail Baryshnikov turns up you know he’s gonna play the young stud dancer who loves and leaves ‘em (I have no idea why he was nominated for an Oscar, he gets barely anything to do except dance).

 

It’s basically a higher-minded, middle-aged “Valley of the Dolls”, and the ballet sequences did nothing for me. Meanwhile, MacLaine’s jealousy of her daughter’s relationship with Bancroft (who has the skinniest arms I’ve ever seen, by the way) really makes no sense. It’d make more sense for her to be jealous that her daughter is having the career that she gave up. MacLaine’s true beef with Bancroft goes way back before the kid was born, and it makes MacLaine’s character seem rather unsympathetic.

 

Some will love this, ballet lovers will probably get most out of it. The acting is mostly fine, especially the two stars. However, it’s very soapy and superficial, having fairly limited appeal for me. I’m as far from the target audience of this kind of thing as you can get, but I think it’s worth noting that for a film with 11 Oscar nominations, it sure doesn’t get brought up a lot in conversation around 40 years later. The music is really good, though.

 

Rating: C+

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