Wartime Winds of Change
Evocative period atmoshere – that is how I could summarize my experience of watching the two Saturday Night at the Movies (TVOntario) features, Yanks (1979) and Swing Shift (1984).
I’ve never been to England. I never lived through “the War”. I know and love all the great swing/ jazz music that was played to good advantage during both the films, but after the fact. I wasn’t even around at the time, but these movies make me feel like I had déjà vu.
The opening scenes of “Swing Shift” gave me the feeling that I was looking through my Mom’s old photo album with that picture postcard kind of look or a snapshot impression of life in the 1940’s - except that my Mom doesn’t have any photos like that.
It was a pleasant enough experience getting lost in the byroads of wartime Britain with the American GIs and going to work with Rosie the Riveter (Goldie Hawn) in the MacBride airplane factory of Los Angeles. Both films were good entertainment value. Although some might sneer at “ Swing Shift” as a piece of Hollywood fluff meant to be yet another vehicle for Goldie Hawn, I found that the film contained overtures of being something more.
For a look behind the scenes at why there seem to be these “promises of something more” that never seem to amount to anything in “Swing Shift”, I recommend looking at this analysis by Steve Vineberg. Apparently there is a wide discrepancy between the director’s original cut and the studio released version due to an unfortunate disagreement. Vineburg’s opinion is that the director’s vision of things made for a much deeper and much better film than we what we end up with on the screen.
In Yanks, a 1979 production starring a young Richard Gere and débuting the American actress, Lisa Eichhorn, I found a sensitive portrait of real people striving to come to grips with the changes brought about by war. The two secondary romances between Danny and Mollie, the representatives of the working class, and between John and Helen, representatives of the elite social class might not be drawn out quite as well, but they are still believable enough as important supporting roles.
The whole situation for me seemed to be encapsulated by the scene where the peaceful pastoral landscape of a summer's day complete with wooly sheep is intruded upon in a rather unexpected way by an American warship plowing through a canal in the English countryside. Jean Moreton’s life and times, including her presumed engagement to Ken, a childhood friend, are permanently disrupted by the arrival of the Yanks. Everyone has to adjust at times such as these.
Jean’s mother has a particularly difficult time accepting the American, Matt Dyson, as a suitor for her daughter. She states, perhaps on behalf of many other characters in the film, that she is trying her best not to let prejudice overtake her. Mrs. Moreton says that she just does not want to see her daughter get hurt. These seem to be two themes in the film: dealing with awkward and unsightly prejudices from both sides of the Atlantic and the pursuit of happiness while facing up to the risks of one’s personal choices.
Jean has to decide how much of a risk she is willing to take in pursuing a love interest with the American soldier. She has to decide how open she will be to a life that is beyond the scope of her limited horizons in a small English village.
Toward the end of the movie, during a very turbulent time when Jean appears to be rather confused and insecure about her relationship with Matt, she asks him to “just take her away from it all”. By this stage, the English fiancé has been killed in action, Jean’s mother is about to die and the Americans are on the point of being shipped out. The couple steals away to a hotel. Things do not turn out very well. Both parties are confused, hurt and unsure of where the relationship is headed. Jean cries all the way home on the train. Matt appears not to know what to do.
Jean calls Matt a coward for retreating during the sexual encounter. She throws uncharacteristically unkind 
words at him, saying that he does not really love her. Strange as it may sound in our day and age, the Matt Dyson character played as an attractive, able-bodied male thought he had a reason for not pursuing sex with his girlfriend. Even when it was somebody he loved, he thought that sex would be better at another time in another way. Matt Dyson is faced with the risk of losing Jean forever. Matt risks losing the beloved, not through a casualty of war, but through the foolishness of taking advantage of an emotionally overwrought young woman. Being the decent chap that he is, Dyson exercises his better judgment instead of giving in to his hormones. He takes the risk. Matt faces up to Jean’s misunderstanding, her cruel words, and his own insecure position in the relationship.
Then Matt Dyson does what he always does, the truly manly thing to do under such circumstances: he bakes a cake.
Somehow it works. The cake strategy works. The big train scene works. That ridiculous line about being pregnant works for Mollie as she and Jean forge desperately ahead through the crowd to the train platform. Everyone in the audience really wants things to work for the lovers as they strain to see each other at the last minute and the train rolls out of the station. You get the idea that if Richard Gere can just get himself back from action in Europe without being blown up, everything will work out in the end. You are convinced that Matt and Jean will get married once the war is over and that a bright future will ensue once that nasty bit of business with the war settles down.
It is all a very satisfying ending – nice and tidy. Sure life is change and life is risk, but you come out the other side believing that it is still worth living.
As for “Swing Shift”, lots of things in that movie work for me. It does manage to evoke something of the wartime America atmosphere. And who can resist the music? The indirect social comment on the changing roles of women in the workplace and in society forms a successful backdrop for the main action of the film.
Goldie Hawn does a good job of playing a naïve young woman undergoing a journey of self-discovery and emancipation. The war changes things for her character, Kaye Walsh. Christine Lahti also does well as Hazel, the worldly-wise dance hall singer turned wartime factory worker.
There are some things that don’t work for me though. The ending of the film seemed rather unconvincing.
It is not hard for me to believe that a guy like Lucky would insinuate himself into Kaye’s existence while her husband is away at war. The breakdown of the easy friendship of the Kaye, Hazel and Lucky trio after a disappointed Lucky sleeps with Hazel is pretty much a "no-brainer" as well. Things tend to get messed up when you cheat on your friends. That Hawn’s character displays double-mindedness and a divided heart when her husband arrives back home from the war unexpectedly is no surprise.
But it beats me how Kaye thinks that she can get on with her life just by saying near the end of the film, “Honey, I know I hurt you by what I did.” As if the marriage will be salvaged by such a remark! Her husband Jack at one point says he “has to go away and think about a lot of things.” He shows up after thinking about it: carry on soldier. Well, we’re glad that’s over and done with. No one seems to take the adulterous affair terribly seriously. According to Kaye, it is just one of those things that happens during a war. It is just one of the benchmarks of a woman’s journey in self-actualization.
Yeah, right. Fixing a marriage after adultery is a little bit more complicated than fixing a toaster, even though it is a good thing, surely a very good thing for a woman to know how to handle a screwdriver and fix her own home appliances.
Speaking of patching things up, did I miss something in the scene behind the house where Hazel and Kaye try reconcile their differences? It is implied that the two go on to become fast friends once again. After the big cat fight and the events leading up to it did anyone ever say, “I was wrong. Please forgive me.”? (Not just, “Oh that was such a dumb thing to do,” or “I wish I hadn’t because of the mess it got us into.”) Maybe that is too much to expect, but . . .
And can someone explain why the feisty Hazel all of a sudden up and marries “Biscuits”? Sure he has the uniform to try to convince us that he has really pulled himself up by his bootstraps (acquired it seems in the final moments of the war after he has raked in a tidy sum from his dance hall business). How can a woman who purports to teach us about self-respect, self-worth and sturdy self-reliance, a woman who at one time slugs her former sleaze-ball employer from her bicycle rather than accept an unsolicited lift, how can such a woman stoop to tie the knot with a guy like “Biscuits”?
Maybe she got tired of being lonely. Maybe maternal clock had been ticking for a bit too long and Hazel decided that for her next act in life, she needed a hubby and babies. Maybe the fact that everyone else was coming home from the war and getting outfitted with the wedding ring, the electric washing machine (displayed prominently in a final scene of the film) and a white picket fence was just too much for her and Hazel decided that she needed some of that too. Maybe Hazel found out that matrimony was as good an option as any other - But why “Biscuits”? Granted, this is a movie about openness to change and personal growth, but does anyone actually believe that “Biscuits” has gotten any better with time just because Hazel has started to call him by his Christian name, Archibald?
Some things just don’t add up. Knowing the controversy with the director mentioned by Steve Vineberg helps to diagnose where the problem with the sum lies. But it is more than that.
The “Swing Shift” film rings true to life in some important ways, but on other counts it misses the mark. I can’t help but think that the ending has been painted on like some kind of carnival poster – it invites you to come and have a good time, but it is an empty, unsatisfying promise.
With “Swing Shift” the boys are back from war, the good economic times have arrived and everyone is all set to live happily ever after. . . But I don’t believe that it will happen – not the way that I believed it for Matt and Jean in “Yanks”. Kaye and Hazel and Lucky might have a good time for a while in their respective new lives, but nothing convinces me that it will turn out all right in the end.
Funny that. The choices that people make do make a difference, even in the Hollywood movies.
But, hey – Hollywood is about making money and enjoying yourself. I don’t know if these films made any big money, but I can say that I did generally enjoy myself while watching them.
Stay tuned for the next double feature on TVO’s Saturday Night at the Movies, Saturday, May 14th, The Americanization of Emily (1964) Julie Andrews and James Garner, 8pm EST and Marty (1955), Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair, 10:30 pm EST