Swing Shift Reviews

This latter-day look at "Rosie the Riveter" stars Goldie Hawn as Kay Walsh, whose husband, Jack (Ed Harris), is sent off to fight in WWII. Kay goes to work at an aircraft factory where she meets Lucky (Kurt Russell), whose heart problem has kept him out of uniform. They begin an affair, and Kay also develops a close friendship with her "loose" (i.e., emancipated) neighbor, Hazel (Christine Lahti). When Jack comes home on furlough, he discovers Kay's infidelity and goes back to war with a broken heart. In turn, Lucky, feeling rejected, sleeps with the lonely Hazel, upsetting relations among the three civilians. SWING SHIFT's view of adultery isn't very palatable--since Jack is at least as likable, if not more, than Lucky and seems to have a "good" marriage with Kay. Many castigated the film for using wartime hardships to justify Kay's affair and tarnish the patriotic image of the homefront Rosies. A fairer assessment suggests that director Jonathan Demme's characteristic generosity toward his characters and refusal to make absolute moral judgments are strong points, while the feminist subtext adds freshness to the story. The dullness of Kay and Lucky's romance, however, does damage the film, and may be the result of friction between Demme and Hawn, who reportedly had another director brought in to shoot new scenes that conventionalized the love triangle and downplayed Lahti's Hazel.