Dance, Girl, Dance

A dance troupe works the clubs. Judy wants to do ballet; she trains seriously and hopes one day to be on a stage. Bubbles knows what she wants: she will do whatever the audience is paying for. The troupe breaks up. Bubbles finds work in burlesque and rises fast. She gives Judy a job too: she will dance ballet between the numbers and the audience will jeer her; that is the act. Judy accepts it for a while. One night she stops on stage and starts talking to the house. Dorothy Arzner directs. Maureen O'Hara plays Judy and Lucille Ball plays Bubbles; Louis Hayward and Virginia Field are in the cast. It is an American production, made in 1940. Dorothy Arzner was the only woman directing in Hollywood at the time. The speech from the stage was much discussed later in film theory; the woman looks at the audience and tells them why they are there. The film was not a commercial success on release and was reassessed years later. The narrative does not build the two women as rivals; the relation between them is complicated and includes solidarity. The matter it treats is being looked at; the film questions the viewer's position directly. The men stay in the background. The ending closes on a rescue and that passage weakens the film's argument. Its limit is structure; the narrative runs to type and the studio system sets the ending. Who it is for: viewers curious about classic Hollywood and the early work of women directors. Who it is not for: it is old, conventional, and the ending easy.