Swing Shift

"Swing Shift," director Jonathan Demme's sensitive story about women who went to war with a rivet gun, begins the night before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Living in modest California bungalows, Kay Walsh (Goldie Hawn) and her husband, Jack (Ed Harris) live a simple and enjoyable life. Everything is suddenly changed with the Sunday afternoon announcement of the devastating assault on the Pacific Fleet and the Army Air Corps bases in Hawaii.

Jack enlists immediately as do many of the couple's neighbors and friends. Alone, bored and motivated by genuine patriotism Kay goes to work at an aircraft plant that builds the tough, reliable SBD carrier-borne dive bomber. She strikes up, awkwardly at first, a friendship with neighbor Hazel (Christine Lahti), a woman with a nightclub-owning boyfriend. Jack had made some nasty not sotto voce cracks about her before he left for war.

Kay takes to the assembly line and enjoys being productive. But she's also lonely - it was a long war. Her "leadman," a sort of foreman, is "Lucky" (Kurt Russell). He and she begin a friendship that culminates in one of those wartime affairs that happened very often and is realistically portrayed by Hawn who is torn between marital fidelity and loneliness (and, obviously, dealing with separation-enforced abstinence).

Lucky is a 4-F. That meant he was "physically, mentally or morally unfit" for military service. In his case - phew - it's a latent heart condition.

The affair goes through various stages, punctuated by Jack's surprise arrival on a forty-eight hour pass. Whatever suspecting his wife is having it on with Lucky may do to him, he's also both bemused and confused that as a "leadman," (she's been promoted) she earns more in a factory than he does serving in the Fleet. Harris's portrayal is of a man on the cusp of a social change he feels but can't really identify.

There are a lot of ups and downs in this story but Hawn and Lahti in particular deliver strongly emotional and convincing performances. This was long before women could rise to general officer or flag officer rank and assume major wartime responsibilities. Hawn is Rosie the Riveter, the patriotic but largely uneducated and unskilled patriotic American female. There were tens of thousands of such women employed in every type of industrial work.

Obviously the absence of husbands and the surfeit of available albeit older or not totally fit men aided the initiation of extramarital affairs. But "Swing Shift" also subtly conveys the reality that the women who went to work were empowered by the global conflict. Despite an ending that affirms the women's promise and duty to relinquish employment to returning veterans (the promise was unnecessary since both law and custom insured their rapid dismissal), American women were fundamentally changed by the liberating reality of serving their country by working (often for the first time) and earning money. The political, economic and social reverberations would be felt for decades. "Swing Shift" is fine entertainment but it's also a chronicle of an important aspect of America's Home Front.

A fine movie. Available on DVD in a good transfer with no real special features.

9/10.

It's 1941 Santa Monica. Kay Walsh (Goldie Hawn) is happily married. Her fisherman husband Jack (Ed Harris) enlists after Pearl Harbor. Kay gets a job at the aircraft plant despite Jack's objections. Their lounge singer neighbor Hazel (Christine Lahti) is tired of her manager Archibald 'Biscuits' Touie (Fred Ward) and doesn't like the Walshes either who often snicker at her. Eventually, the two women become best of friends at the sexist plant on the swing shift from four to midnight. Kay starts to fall for her supervisor trumpet player Mike 'Lucky' Lockhart (Kurt Russell).

He's a player hound-dogging a married woman. She doesn't come off that well either. There has to be a higher degree of douchness from Jack to excuse her cheating on him. He is a male chauvinist but not necessarily worst than everybody else including Lucky. As a rom-com, it's very awkward. I really couldn't take the bad romance. For this to work, this has to be a darker drama. All the lightness has to go. Goldie Hawn is the wrong person to go there. There is a wrong tone to the movie. I don't know which version I saw although I suspect it's not the director's cut.

I have watched this twice since it's release in 1984. The most recent was over new years 2022, and the verdict remains the same.

An uninspiring story that lacks authenticity and purpose.

The story is jumbled and other than Christine Lathi's compelling performance, the film has no deeming value.

Goldie Hawn would star in other, better executed storylines.

This film is not one of them.

I wish the directors cut of this film was available as I have read several stories by those that had the chance to see it and that appears to be story that the late Jonathan Demme wanted to tell. Demme was an excellent filmmaker and it appears that his version was overrun by Hawn who was the executive producer of this mess of a film.

I really did like this movie. There's a lot to like. It's the beginning of World War II, and all the men are being called to the Army. Goldie Hawn and Ed Harris are a typical American couple thus pulled apart. Goldie gets a Rosie the Riveter job, where she meets Kurt Russel, a 4F plant foreman, and the rest is history.

Swing Shift was directed by Jonathan Demme, of Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia fame, and if this one is a little lighter, it was also a lot earlier in his career. Holly Hunter appears in a very small supporting role, but gives it her star-quality best. Christine Lahti is magnificent as the single neighbor who befriends Goldie at the factory even though she and her husband were cruel to her before the war changed everyone's lives. Fred Ward was already becoming old hat, but he, like the rest of the film, ends up being likeable and thoroughly enjoyable.

Hawn and Russell met on the set and have been together ever since. Maybe the excitement of their real-life romance drained the spark from their on-screen version. This could have been a really moving story of a woman who falls in love while her husband is off to war, but ends up showing us a couple of bump-buddies killing time till their real lives resume. Perhaps that was the point.

Ed Harris is perfectly cast as the common man trying to keep his marriage together in the face of all that life throws in its way. There is a famous scene, in which Ed, wearing nothing but a bath towel, plops into a floppy chair with a cold beer. The resulting bounce proves that Harris is one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, and explains why this charming little tale will never be on DVD.

Swing Shift is a nice period piece, and provides an amusing, if not entirely accurate, view of the tumultous years in the middle of the last century when the entire world went to war.

A quiet first-rate film that has Goldie Hawn at a factory to produce military goods during World War II while husband Ed Harris is off fighting the war. Hawn would have never thought that she would fall for co-worker Kurt Russell in this fine motion picture. Christine Lahti (Oscar-nominated) shines as another co-worker who has a bad reputation and Fred Ward gives another fine performance in a small supporting role. Directed by Jonathan Demme, "Swing Shift" is one of those diamonds in the rough from the 1980s. A good film. 4 stars out of 5.