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Jonathan Demme: Swing Shift
built 286 days ago
Demme broke into feature film directing working for Roger Corman. His first mainstream feature Melvin and Howard caught the eye of Hollywood and he was signed to direct the Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell vehicle Swing Shift. The compromised production saw Demme withdraw for a time from major feature films making a notable series of 'concert films' with Stop Making Sense and Swimming to Cambodia. He continues to alternate making feature films with documentaries and concert/performance films. For instance, he was the executive producer for his longtime friend Nancy Savoca's Household Saints.
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Faithful to the plot and incident of Thomas Harris’ best seller, Demme shifts its tone and meaning. The film makes Clarice even more central—and more isolated—than she was in the novel. As Foster plays her, she’s remote in a way that signals something more complex than a novice’s attempt at a professional attitude. Demme shoots the scenes between Lecter and Clarice in extreme close-up, shot-countershot, with the actors looking directly into the camera. You can see the tension in Clarice’s face, her concentrated struggle not only to get the information she needs from Lecter, but ... to avoid being overwhelmed by him—to maintain her separation from him.
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There is ... an account of the Swing Shift debacle in Michael Bliss and Christina Banks' otherwise worthless book What Goes Around Comes Around: The Films of Jonathan Demme, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, April 1996. It's a travesty that this is the only English-language study of Demme's films and it requires immediate remedy.
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SWING SHIFT was taken away from Demme and isn't very substantial, though in its evocation of Wartime fashions and kitsch, it's very much of a piece with his other work. Not Kurt's finest hair....
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Swing Shift