Film Forum

(1940) “Give ’em everything you’ve got!” “They couldn’t take it!” Lucille Ball’s leggy “Bubbles” nudges Maureen O’Hara from ballerina career to burlesque queen, with Maureen’s climactic speech to the yahoos a stand-out. 35mm. Approx. 90 mins.

Reviews

“There are plenty of laughs…but Dance, Girl, Dance never loses sight of the important sacrifices — and necessary compromises — women make in pursuit of artistic careers.”
– Melissa Anderson, The Village Voice

“Arzner films [dance] with fascination and enthusiasm, and the choreography is marked by the point of view of the spectators and the dancers’ awareness that they’re being watched. Arzner—one of the few women directors in Hollywood—shows women dancers enduring men’s slobbering stares. The very raison d’être of these women’s performances is to titillate men, and that’s where the story’s two vectors intersect—art versus commerce and love versus lust. This idealistic paean to the higher realms of creative and romantic fulfillment is harshly realistic about the degradations that women endure in base entertainments—including some cinematic ones.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker