Top Dancers Take Flight in 'White Nights' on DVD
Burbank, California—Twenty one years have passed since White Nights, a tale of two artists trapped in a totalitarian state, debuted in theaters. Director Taylor Hackford's 1985 picture premieres on DVD this week.
There is much to appreciate in the flawed dance thriller, in which a passenger jet crashes in the Soviet Union with a famous dancer defector on board. Assigned to coerce him back to dictatorship is an American expatriate who figured red was better than dead. The defector resists, the dancers dance, and the plot thickens.
White Nights is worth watching if only to see the 20th century's tops in their art forms: tap dancer Gregory Hines (Tap) and ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov (The Turning Point). Their work is astounding—with the late Hines performing an amazing routine and Mr. Baryshnikov using every muscle in his body to perform modern, ballet and tap. Do not miss the opening sequences, which offer a stark cultural contrast.
The story mirrors Mr. Baryshnikov's daring 1974 defection from the Soviet Union in Toronto. After years of being restricted in his artistic choices and being followed by the Soviet KGB secret police, he made the most important move of his life. One night after he danced in a final performance of the Soviet Bolshoi Ballet's Don Quixote, according to Mr. Baryshnikov in a 2001 interview, he exited the stage door, pushed past a throng of fans and ran toward an awaiting getaway car. Weeks later, he was dancing in the American Ballet Theatre.
Several top dancers also fled communism. The great male ballet dancer, Rudolph Nureyev (Valentino, Nijinsky), while on tour with the Kirov Ballet in Paris, slipped past Soviet guards on June 16, 1961, broke through an airport security barrier and declared: "I want to be free." The most wrenching defection—by Mr. Baryshnikov's childhood friend and classmate, Alexander Godunov (Witness, Die Hard)—sparked a standoff between the Soviets and the Americans that's straight out of a scene in White Nights.
In August of 1979, according to Time magazine, Godunov—on tour with the Bolshoi—walked past the KGB in the lobby at New York City's Mayflower Hotel and went straight to the American government, which immediately granted his request for asylum.
But Godunov's wife, ballerina Ludmilla Vlasova, was detained by the Soviets, which prompted an immediate objection from the United States and led to a confrontation at New York's JFK Airport.
As Time reported: "a group of eight grim-visaged Soviet diplomats and police agents escorted Vlasova up the ramp of the Aeroflot jet. As the plane readied for takeoff, Port Authority police cars raced out onto the tarmac and slammed to a stop in front of the Soviet aircraft." U.S. authorities refused to grant the plane permission to leave and insisted on boarding to interview Godunov's wife about whether she wished to stay. But when they arrived, she was surrounded by Soviet agents and she provided predictable answers. The plane took off with his wife on it. Godunov, who died in 1995, tried and failed to get her out. They eventually divorced.
While White Nights is not explicitly anti-communist, it depicts the tense, chronic fear and the hollow, dull ache of life under communism in every line, movement and facial expression from Mikhail Baryshnikov. His embittered solo performance at the Kirov is the movie's most powerful scene.
Quality dancing by strong leads in a major movie is enticing enough but White Nights additionally offers sharp performances from Helen Mirren as a Soviet arts director, Polish actor Jerzy Skolimowski as a communist colonel, and, in her motion picture debut, Isabella Rossellini as Hines's wife. As Baryshnikov's can-do manager who applies hero worship to world politics, Geraldine Page stands out.
Miss Page starred in another fine, independent movie that same year; MGM's fondly rendered and beautifully acted The Trip to Bountiful, co-starring John Heard, Carlin Glynn and Rebecca De Mornay. This one-woman jewel about an impossible journey to a girlhood home was adapted from Horton Foote's (Tender Mercies) play. Geraldine Page, who died in 1987, earned a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar for her truly grand tour performance.
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• Scott Holleran's Past Columns
RELATED LINKS
• White Nights on DVD
• The Trip to Bountiful on DVD
There is much to appreciate in the flawed dance thriller, in which a passenger jet crashes in the Soviet Union with a famous dancer defector on board. Assigned to coerce him back to dictatorship is an American expatriate who figured red was better than dead. The defector resists, the dancers dance, and the plot thickens.
White Nights is worth watching if only to see the 20th century's tops in their art forms: tap dancer Gregory Hines (Tap) and ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov (The Turning Point). Their work is astounding—with the late Hines performing an amazing routine and Mr. Baryshnikov using every muscle in his body to perform modern, ballet and tap. Do not miss the opening sequences, which offer a stark cultural contrast.
The story mirrors Mr. Baryshnikov's daring 1974 defection from the Soviet Union in Toronto. After years of being restricted in his artistic choices and being followed by the Soviet KGB secret police, he made the most important move of his life. One night after he danced in a final performance of the Soviet Bolshoi Ballet's Don Quixote, according to Mr. Baryshnikov in a 2001 interview, he exited the stage door, pushed past a throng of fans and ran toward an awaiting getaway car. Weeks later, he was dancing in the American Ballet Theatre.
Several top dancers also fled communism. The great male ballet dancer, Rudolph Nureyev (Valentino, Nijinsky), while on tour with the Kirov Ballet in Paris, slipped past Soviet guards on June 16, 1961, broke through an airport security barrier and declared: "I want to be free." The most wrenching defection—by Mr. Baryshnikov's childhood friend and classmate, Alexander Godunov (Witness, Die Hard)—sparked a standoff between the Soviets and the Americans that's straight out of a scene in White Nights.
In August of 1979, according to Time magazine, Godunov—on tour with the Bolshoi—walked past the KGB in the lobby at New York City's Mayflower Hotel and went straight to the American government, which immediately granted his request for asylum.
But Godunov's wife, ballerina Ludmilla Vlasova, was detained by the Soviets, which prompted an immediate objection from the United States and led to a confrontation at New York's JFK Airport.
As Time reported: "a group of eight grim-visaged Soviet diplomats and police agents escorted Vlasova up the ramp of the Aeroflot jet. As the plane readied for takeoff, Port Authority police cars raced out onto the tarmac and slammed to a stop in front of the Soviet aircraft." U.S. authorities refused to grant the plane permission to leave and insisted on boarding to interview Godunov's wife about whether she wished to stay. But when they arrived, she was surrounded by Soviet agents and she provided predictable answers. The plane took off with his wife on it. Godunov, who died in 1995, tried and failed to get her out. They eventually divorced.
While White Nights is not explicitly anti-communist, it depicts the tense, chronic fear and the hollow, dull ache of life under communism in every line, movement and facial expression from Mikhail Baryshnikov. His embittered solo performance at the Kirov is the movie's most powerful scene.
Quality dancing by strong leads in a major movie is enticing enough but White Nights additionally offers sharp performances from Helen Mirren as a Soviet arts director, Polish actor Jerzy Skolimowski as a communist colonel, and, in her motion picture debut, Isabella Rossellini as Hines's wife. As Baryshnikov's can-do manager who applies hero worship to world politics, Geraldine Page stands out.
Miss Page starred in another fine, independent movie that same year; MGM's fondly rendered and beautifully acted The Trip to Bountiful, co-starring John Heard, Carlin Glynn and Rebecca De Mornay. This one-woman jewel about an impossible journey to a girlhood home was adapted from Horton Foote's (Tender Mercies) play. Geraldine Page, who died in 1987, earned a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar for her truly grand tour performance.
$
• Scott Holleran's Past Columns
RELATED LINKS
• White Nights on DVD
• The Trip to Bountiful on DVD
