Emile Ardolino makes attraction convincing by letting people dance together. His stories can be familiar and the dialogue too insistent, but we recommend Dirty Dancing for the feeling he allows its performers to put into movement.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze respond to each other in Dirty Dancing (1987): Ardolino gives them enough space to make attraction visible. The dancing tells us why these two people might want to be together without asking a speech to do the work. We were won over by that physical responsiveness, despite dialogue that sometimes had us waiting for the next dance. His direction earns affection the familiar story cannot always earn for itself.
He had spent years directing dance for television, including programmes for Dance in America and Live from Lincoln Center. His documentary He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin’ (1983) follows Jacques d’Amboise teaching children. His collaborators included choreographer Kenny Ortega and cinematographer Jeffrey Jur, and his skill lay in finding camera angles and edits that made dancing feel immediate. In Dirty Dancing, that experience serves the performers: we can follow their attraction through movement.
The weakness is what happens when the music stops. Dirty Dancing has spoken scenes that leave us waiting for the dancers to start again, and Grey and Swayze have to sustain our interest through lines that advertise their importance. At 100 minutes, the film gives a modest story a sensible amount of space. We like Ardolino’s willingness to let a romance remain modest, even if we wish he had been tougher on the dialogue.
His move into mainstream comedy continued with Chances Are (1989) and Three Men and a Little Lady (1990). Sister Act (1992) put his skill with musical performance to work within comedy. The filmed ballet George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker (1993) and television musical Gypsy (1993) kept performance central to his later work. Start with Dirty Dancing, and be prepared to forgive a few lines once Grey and Swayze get moving.
Biography
Emile Ardolino was an American film and television director and producer. He began his career in off-Broadway theatre before co-founding Compton-Ardolino Films in 1967. He later worked extensively for PBS on the Dance in America series and related programmes.
Ardolino won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin' (1983) and received multiple Emmy Awards. He achieved mainstream success directing the feature films Dirty Dancing (1987), Chances Are (1989), Three Men and a Little Lady (1990) and Sister Act (1992). His final works included The Nutcracker (1993) and a television production of Gypsy (1993).
Ardolino was born on 9 May 1943 in Maspeth, Queens, New York, and died on 20 November 1993 in Los Angeles, California.
