White Nights *** (1985, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gregory Hines, Jerzy Skolimowski, Helen Mirren, Geraldine Page, Isabella Rossellini) – Classic Movie Review 10,750

Director Taylor Hackford’s 1985 movie White Nights is a daft but entertaining chase-dance drama, a peculiar hybrid of musical and thriller, giving good chances to players difficult to cast.

Mikhail Baryshnikov charismatically plays a Russian dancer, Nikolai ‘Kolya’ Rodchenko, who defected to the West but is held in Leningrad when his plane crash-lands in Siberia. KGB man Colonel Chaiko (Jerzy Skolimowski, excellent) puts him up with US defector Raymond Greenwood (Gregory Hines) and his wife Darya Greenwood (Isabella Rossellini), and they plan an escape.

It gets off to a spectacular start, and some of the dancing is terrific and the suspense sequences are thrilling, though more of both would be better.

This pre-glasnost movie is very anti-Russian, and unsurprisingly Moscow is re-created in Finland, Scotland and Lisbon. Lionel Richie sings his Oscar-winning best song ‘Say You, Say Me’ at the closing credits and another song, ‘Separate Lives’, was Oscar nominated.

Gregory Hines in White Nights (1985).

Helen Mirren, who plays Galina Ivanova, married her director Hackford in 1998.

Lionel Richie won the Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Original Song for ‘Say You, Say Me’. Stephen Bishop was Oscar nominated for Best Original Song for ‘Separate Lives (Love Theme from White Nights)’.

Also in the cast are Geraldine Page, John Glover, Stefan Gryff, and Shane Rimmer.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,750

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