But discretion can take A Chorus Line only so far. So he will not force the narrative into revealing new corners, or visualize a number with anything as raw and tasteless as imagination. Richard Attenborough’s movies are like the best-behaved guests at a Swiss embassy reception they never offend, never impress. The film, though, lies dormant in its own decency. But touched by the minimalist magic of Director Michael Bennett, they found life in the viewer’s mind. Each dancer’s bio may have been trite: a child finding refuge and transcendence in dancing school (At the Ballet), a mouse whose charms are augmented by cosmetic surgery (Dance 10, Looks 3), a teenager whose parents find him dressed as a drag princess.
_1487091665.jpg "the chorus line film")
Yet the thing worked onstage as a puissant metaphor for shab-elegant show biz, where exhibitionism and humiliation dance in precise sync, where each passion must be displayed nakedly and clothed in artifice, where a dedicated pro’s highest hope is to tap and smile invisibly behind the star. The plot asks you to believe that performers in a musical are selected on a kind of psychiatrist’s casting couch, spilling their secret sordid pasts to the director. The dialogue wallows in the least engaging of performer emotions, narcissism and self-pity.
A Chorus Line, which continues to wow ’em on Broadway a decade after it opened, is hardly a perfect musical.
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