Dirty Dancing

Continuing my week-long love affair with the 50s, I move into the 60s and one of The Best Films Ever Made. Like Ever. Dirty Dancing.

Movie stars shuffle off this mortal coil regularly and it's always sad but sometimes one goes and it hits me right in the heart. River Phoenix was one and Patrick Swayze is another. I am very sad he is no longer with us. This post is a few days late really as it's a tribute to my mother who died a year ago last monday. Dirty Dancing was her favourite film. Like Ever. So much so that she said she was Baby and wouldn't countenance the notion that anyone else may lay claim to that title. No, she was Baby and everyone else could go hang.

Dirty Dancing is a film that pretty much all women have a soft spot for. I've never met a female of the species who doesn't harbour a passion for it. Everything about it is perfection. From the beautiful Carolina setting to the 60s soundtrack to Jennifer Grey as Baby and Mr Swayze as Johnny. The dancing in it truly fabulous and I can watch the progression of Baby's dancing endlessly from her nervousness and stepping on toes to her final triumphant performance.

This is another film with some wonderful lines.  Let's look at some of them:

"Go back your playpen Baby"
"Spaghetti arms"
"My god, it's cleopatra, I feel like such an asp"
"Where is my beige, iridescent lipstick?" (I love this - Baby's sister is great comic relief)
"Nobody puts Baby in the corner" (one of the best movie lines. Like Ever.)
"I carried a watermelon?!" (every time I laugh like a drain).

It's a film that seems effortless to make but you know isn't. The editing is fantastic - there is no slow moment and it zips along at a rapid pace. Everyone in it is marvellous, I am especially found of Baby's mother (Kelly Bishop) who turns up 20 years later in Gilmore Girls and is great in that too.

Most of all this is a film that makes you want to dance and dance, meet your own Johnny, carry watermelons, wear pedal pushers and be Baby. This is my favourite scene in the whole film but I am not allowed to embed it. I'm not allowed to embed any scenes from the film. Oh well, let's have another picture of Patrick then. RIP Mr Swayze and RIP my mum, she was Baby you know.