Word: bancrofts
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Herbert Ross has come up with the best solution yet to this dilemma in his film The Turning Point. He avoids this undesirable trade-off by casting a competent actress who cannot pirouette her way out of a paper bag (Anne Bancroft) in one of the two lead roles--a middle-aged ballerina clearly in decline--and supporting her with two genuine ballet stars (Mikhail Baryshnikov and Leslie Browne) in significant if minor roles. Realism and a respect for the irreplaceable skills of a tested movie star blend nicely in Ross' polished parable about the world of ballet...
...Turning Point centers on the bittersweet relationship of Deedee Rodgers (Shirley MacLaine), a one-time aspiring ballerina who gave up the stage for a family, and Emma Jacklin (Bancroft), Deedee's former friend and rival who pursued a career in dance to rise to the top of her profession as the prima ballerina of the best ballet company in the States. They reunite after a long spell of separation when Emma's touring company hits Oklahoma City, where Deedee, the frustrated dancer, spends her middle-aged, middle-American existence raising her three kids and running a ballet school with...
...accordion principle. So many flash backs, so much research, such fragmentary and confusing changes of locale have been squeezed together that the show unfolds in minute pleats rather than full-bodied scenes. The only substantial character in the play is Golda, played with centripetal force by Anne Bancroft...
...inner fire that is one of Anne Bancroft's gifts in lighting up a stage is banked most of the evening, and all that relieves a kind of fatalistic pessimism is a flash of wry humor. "Requiescat in pace" seems more appropriate than "Shalom" for this show...
...Good as Bancroft is, it is not her performance alone that makes the picture work. Director Ross, a sometime choreographer, conveys the sweat "and hard work of dance, the sheer pain of the effort to appear effortless. Writer Laurents has a similar capacity for catching the pretenses and bitchiness of life in a dance company. These touches lie at the heart of the picture's appeal, grounding it in a reality that offsets its gee-whizness