Word: shirley
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...Raceway Park, Shirley tries to collect signatures from fellow drivers to qualify for the race, while many drivers respond to Shirley with remarks like, "make me some bacon and eggs," Connie Kalitta (Beau Bridges) "the bounty hunter," not only signs her petition but helps her to enter the race, in which she is the first woman ever. Of course, she sets a track record. The race initiates Shirley's close relationship with Kalitta, who becomes her friend, lover, mechanic and eventual competitor. She eventually leaves her husband, takes her son and goes West with Connie to make...
Kaplan does his best directing in portraying Shirley's early years in Schenectady. He recreates the excitement of the Saturday night drag race and the Smokey, small town club, where Shirley's father sings, in a way that gives dimension and color to the unfolding scenes. In one scene Shirley, just married, stands in her wedding dress in front of a dilapidated service station while Jack exuberantly describes his future plans, and we believe his naive faith in the future. This youthful energy evaporates, however, when Kaplan transports us to the world of the racetrack. Instead of pulsating action...
Kaplan briefly shows the greasy, macho, tree living lifestyle of the race car driver who is treated like a star. But the audience, like Shirley, is not completely let into this fraternizing crowd. Instead, we are only allowed brief glimpses and therefore never feel their full impact...
While Bedelia, as Shirley, gives an admirable performance, the lines do not give her a chance to express the complete range of her character. She is stifled by Friedman's stiff unemotional dialogue. Unlike Rocky, with whom the audience seemed to sweat and also cheer. Shirley is a cold, almost superhuman character who seems to know exactly what she wants and how to get there. We watch her plow her way through personal conflicts, the male dominated world of the race track, with a hard-nosed determination that asks for no compassion. Shirley always wins her races, and we always...
THROUGHOUT THE FILM, Shirley seems as mechanical as the car she drives. It is only when she is leaving her husband that we see her break down on a payphone to her young son Bedelia's grief at this moment is so convincing that it almost makes up for her emotional rigidity throughout the rest of the film...