Synopsis
In the midst of the Great Depression, manipulative emcee Rocky enlists contestants for a dance marathon offering a $1,500 cash prize. Among them are a failed actress, a middle-aged sailor, a delusional blonde and a pregnant girl.
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Cast
- Jane FondaGloria Beatty
- Michael SarrazinRobert Syverton
- Susannah YorkAlice LeBlanc
- Gig YoungRocky Gravo
- Red ButtonsSailor
- Bonnie BedeliaRuby Bates
- Michael ConradRollo
- Bruce DernJames Bates
- Al LewisTurkey
- Robert FieldsJoel
Recommendations
- 88
RogerEbert.com
The movie's delicately timed pacing and Pollack's visual style work almost stealthily to involve us; we begin to feel the physical weariness and spiritual desperation of the characters. - 83
The A.V. Club
The movie is so unrelievedly pessimistic that only the most dedicated misanthrope could love it. But there’s something oddly bracing—noble, even—about a Hollywood picture that’s willing to say, without even a hint of soft-pedaling, that life isn’t worth living, and that it’s squalid, unfair, and disappointing. - 80
TV Guide Magazine
A suitably glum yet cathartic film experience. - 78
Austin Chronicle
Bleak but exquisitely fashioned microcosm of American life during the Depression. - 70
Chicago Reader
The material is simple and irresistible, and Sydney Pollack stages it well (though without transcending the essential superficiality of his talent). - 70
Variety
A film with Jane Fonda as a hard-as-nails babe. It becomes, in a recreated old ballroom, a sordid spectacle of hard times, a kind of existentialist allegory of life. - 60
The New Yorker
The director, Sydney Pollack, isn't particularly inventive, but he has tight control of the actors. They work well for him, and he keeps the grisly central situation going with energy and drive. - 40
Time Out
The acting is strident and overblown, the narrative technique gimmicky and obvious, and the implication that the competitors' situation is a microcosm of a wider-reaching American malaise (though safely distanced by the period and the flash-back-and-forth narrative technique) rather pretentious.
