The Turning Point

I really and truly have very little to add to the “In Brief” on The Turning Point. It’s mostly a professionally-made star vehicle with a high-gloss finish — the sort of thing Warner Bros. turned out without thinking about it in the 1940s. In fact, it rather resembles Vincent Sherman’s Bette Davis-Miriam Hopkins vehicle Old Acquaintance (1943) — minus the wit, but with ballet added for culture-vulture effect. The ballet business is actually part of the problem with The Turning Point. I suppose it adds tone to the proceedings and at least the illusion of artistic merit, but it also tends to stop the already meandering story dead in its tracks while we watch dance numbers that rarely do anything to advance the plot. It doesn’t help that Ross shoots nearly all these dances the same way — backing his performers with glowing lights creating lens-flare. That was really daring when Richard Lester first did it in 1964. It flew in the face of all the rules of filmmaking. By 1977, it was hardly fresh, and Ross uses it and uses it and then uses it some more — to a degree that it becomes obvious that this is partly to obscure the fact that the rapturous audience watching the performances isn’t actually there.

The Hendersonville Film Society will show The Turning Point Sunday, Feb. 15, at 2 p.m. in the Smoky Mountain Theater at Lake Pointe Landing Retirement Community (behind Epic Cinemas), 333 Thompson St., Hendersonville.