Flashdance

It is a bit a stretch to call Flashdance a musical. Although its story has much in common with the equally Zeitgeist-defining 1980 hit, Fame, insofar as it is an against-the-odds story of an unlikely aspirant (a female welder with a night gig as an exotic dancer) to the performing arts the songs are purely backing tracks to solo dance numbers largely performed by its young star, Jennifer Beals.

To everyone’s surprise it (and the Giorgio Moroder-produced soundtrack) was a huge hit, returning some $95m on a $5m budget and launching the careers of producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, director Adrian Lyne and writer Joe Eszterhas (who re-write the original script by Tom Hedley) who all went on to t'urn out a goodly portion of the most tacky and/or commercially successful Hollywood fare of the 1980s and 90s.

It is hard to explain the success of the film other than by suggesting that Jennifer Beals’ Alex Owens was a Cinderella for the 1980s - a kind of wish-fulfilment figure for what was the first generation of independent, cashed-up young females (although they could only emulate Beals’s off-the-shoulder knitwear, not her calisthenic dance moves). 

Beals is a perky performer (apparently a lot of her dancing was done by a stand-in) in what was her screen debut but although she has since had a consistent career in film and television since she has never come so close to the light again.

 

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