Flashdance

Frameline and the Roxie are teaming up for a new film series Retro Redemptions, where we dust off films of the past that are in need of a second look — movies that never got their due or the proper respect in their day. 

Oh, what a feeling Flashdance still conjures 40 years later. A critical failure that became an unexpected box office smash, the film launched the careers of its bare-shouldered star Jennifer Beals, director Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction), and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (who would continue to explore the blurred lines between tasteful and tawdry dance with Showgirls a decade later), Flashdance introduces us to Pittsburgh’s lipstick butch Cinderella, Alex Owens (Beals): steel mill welder by day, seductive cabaret dancer by night, dreaming of pirouetting into the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance.

With its instantly recognizable style (from Alex’s warehouse loft to her cut-off sweatshirts and leg warmers), legendary soundtrack (featuring Donna Summer, Laura Branigan, Michael Sembello’s “Maniac,” and Irene Cara’s Oscar-winning theme song), and an array of dance numbers so hot the club had to create splash zone seating, Flashdance defied critics to become the third highest grossing film of 1983 in the U.S. — not to mention one of the rare films to have been nominated for Oscars and Razzies in the same year — cementing its place into pop culture and cinema herstory.