After viewing The Cutting Edge I realize that I saw some of this same story a few weeks ago when I watched Sonja Henie in It's Your Pleasure. In that film Michael O'Shea is a professional hockey player who gets banned for life after slugging a referee and Henie recruits and trains him to be her partner in her ice show.
No professionals here just talented amateurs. D.B. Sweeney takes a nasty blow during the Olympics in Calgary which robs him of peripheral vision on one side, bad for hockey player where you have to see some opponents coming up on both sides if you have the puck. His career, his hopes of making it to the National Hockey League is over.
At the same time Moira Kelly is a talented, but really temperamental figure skater, a Tonya Harding in the making, who blows the finals at Calgary when she and her partner fail to land a big move. She's decided she needs a new partner. If she's to do well at Albertville four years later she has to have a new partner. But the problem is that she's got such a bad reputation no one will skate with her.
I think you can see where this one is going without too much trouble. The problem I had with The Cutting Edge is the same one I had with the Sonja Henie film, the skills for hockey skating aren't the same for figure skating. I really can't see a Maurice Richard or a Gordie Howe ever making it in figure skating.
Still Sweeney and Kelly are an attractive couple and through some clever editing, distance and rear view cinematography, and shots of them from the neck up on ice you do get the feeling you are watching them if only for a moment. Of course Kelly will never be confused with Sonja Henie and they didn't even try to actually show Michael O'Shea as a figure skater. But both Sweeney and Kelly look far better than James Stewart, Joan Crawford, and Lew Ayres did as skaters in Ice Follies Of 1939.
This is definitely a nice film for fans of figure skating and young romance.
No professionals here just talented amateurs. D.B. Sweeney takes a nasty blow during the Olympics in Calgary which robs him of peripheral vision on one side, bad for hockey player where you have to see some opponents coming up on both sides if you have the puck. His career, his hopes of making it to the National Hockey League is over.
At the same time Moira Kelly is a talented, but really temperamental figure skater, a Tonya Harding in the making, who blows the finals at Calgary when she and her partner fail to land a big move. She's decided she needs a new partner. If she's to do well at Albertville four years later she has to have a new partner. But the problem is that she's got such a bad reputation no one will skate with her.
I think you can see where this one is going without too much trouble. The problem I had with The Cutting Edge is the same one I had with the Sonja Henie film, the skills for hockey skating aren't the same for figure skating. I really can't see a Maurice Richard or a Gordie Howe ever making it in figure skating.
Still Sweeney and Kelly are an attractive couple and through some clever editing, distance and rear view cinematography, and shots of them from the neck up on ice you do get the feeling you are watching them if only for a moment. Of course Kelly will never be confused with Sonja Henie and they didn't even try to actually show Michael O'Shea as a figure skater. But both Sweeney and Kelly look far better than James Stewart, Joan Crawford, and Lew Ayres did as skaters in Ice Follies Of 1939.
This is definitely a nice film for fans of figure skating and young romance.