TWIST
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 1993 David N. Butterworth/The Summer Pennsylvanian
Promoting itself as "an instructional dance film," TWIST purports to chronicle the evolution of rock-and-roll dance. Instead it jumbles together a wide and disjointed assortment of nostalgic images, leaving the audience to figure out what it's all about. As a result, TWIST is a dance documentary with two left feet.
The film is structured as eight dance "lessons," complete with flashy title boards, but there's nothing especially unique to be learned from each section. Canadian producer/director Ron Mann uses a combination of old film and television footage and interviews with now middle-aged AMERICAN BANDSTAND dancers and recording artists. He spotlights these performers by having them jiggle in front of heavily stylized backgrounds and, frankly, it's embarrassing.
It's clear from the observations of Betty (Romantini) Begg, Carole (Scaldeferri) Spada and Floss (Harvey) Mancini why they are dancers, not commentators, as Mann allows them to ramble on even though they have almost nothing to say. In addition, Hank Ballard, Joey Dee, and to some extent Chubby Checker come across as egotistical jerks--surely not the director's intention.
The film kicks off with the early 1950s, when ballroom dancing was all the rage. In the juke joints and nightclubs of Harlem, places like Smalls, The Apollo and The Savoy, a rising young star called Hank Ballard and his group the Midnighters were performing their hits, songs like "Get It," "Sexy Ways," and the infamous "Work With Me Annie." Ballard's lyrics were raw and suggestive.
With the arrival of such notables as Elvis Presley, disc jockeys on radio stations like Philadelphia's WDAS stopped calling Ballard's style of music R&B and started calling it rock and roll--"to attract the white kids." On WFIL-TV's AMERICAN BANDSTAND, regulars on the show started imitating the black kids and claiming the dance steps as their own. Mann's interview with BANDSTAND dancers Joan (Buck) Kiene and Jimmy Peatross attempts to illustrate how the white mainstream ripped off the African- American culture. As a political message it's too simplistic; Mann lingers on their shallow repetitiveness and misses the opportunity to make a major statement.
Most of the information presented in TWIST isn't new--the fact that rock and roll was considered to be a "communicable disease" under Eisenhower's presidency, for example--but the section on the Twist itself is informative and well-structured.
In 1959, Ballard's recording "The Twist" took the nation by storm. Twisting was easy; you just moved your hips. As legend has it, Dick Clark assumed that the song would be too dirty coming from Ballard, and it didn't show up on BANDSTAND until the cleaner-imaged Chubby Checker recorded his version in 1960. A year later the dance had become a world-wide sensation and the song returned to number one, spawning over 300 Twist spin-offs. It was probably the first time those immortal words "It's got a good beat and you can dance to it" were spoken on prime time TV. At a New York club called the Peppermint Lounge, Manhattan's rich and famous were rubbing shoulders with the commonfolk to get in on the action.
For a brief moment the film becomes quite fascinating; we learn how influential the Twist really was, starting fashion trends and saturating popular culture. If only the rest of the film could have maintained this momentum. Unfortunately, Mann follows this portion of the film with a downward-spiraling epilogue that simply flings more contrived dance floor maneuvers in our face. The Swim, the Jerk, the Watusi--all less successful derivations. The Hully Gully and the Hucklebuck; imitations that paled by comparison. When the British invaded in 1964, one kind of musical hysteria was traded for another.
For all the shimmying and shaking going on in the film, TWIST is amazingly lacking in energy. The archive footage is varied and often fun (a clip in which Marshall McLuhan shares his thoughts on the dance craze, for example, is a howl), but Mann does very little with it. Many scenes lack continuity. After a while, the frenzied black-and-white footage of teenagers bopping and jitterbugging becomes repetitive and ultimately boring. It's hard to tell the Fly from the Frug, the Millie from the Monkey. Even though TWIST runs only seventy-eight minutes, it's a long haul.
It's not clear whether TWIST is supposed to be a celebration, a tribute, or a condensed history lesson. As a simple account of dance styles from the Fifties and Sixties, it's poorly-conceived (it would have made a fine short film). For all its instructional aspirations, TWIST doesn't know when to lead and when to follow.
| Directed by: Ron Mann David N. Butterworth - UNIVERSITY OF PA | | Rating (Maltin Scale): *1/2 Internet: butterworth@a1.mscf.upenn.edu |
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