“What a feeling!” If you are looking for iconic 80s movie moments Flashdance’s climactic dance audition scene would probably be in the list.

Director Adrian Lyne’s 1983 movie is the frankly ludicrous yet slight story of a beautiful female factory welder (yeh right) who aspires to be a professional dancer.  Lyne drew on his previous experience as a TV commercials director to stage a number of sequences in an MTV music video style.  This was partly because most of star Jennifer Beals’ (in her film debut) dance scenes were shot using body doubles (including a male breakdancer at one point), hence the need for lots of quick cuts.

Flashdance was a surprise box-office success, becoming the third-highest-grossing film of 1983 in the US. This is the soundtrack album, featuring songs by Giorgio Moroder and others. “What a feeling”, performed by Irene Cara, won the Best Original Song Oscar and was a US #1 hit, as was the song “Maniac”. The iconic mage of Beals sporting a sweatshirt with a huge neck hole on the cover was also used on the movie’s poster.

Lyne went onto to direct several more huge genre hits, including Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal, before disappearing from view for 20 years. I recently watched his ‘comeback’ movie Deep Water on Netflix – its an erotic thriller starring Ben Affleck which got generally panned. I quite liked the OTT steamy nature of the whole thing, however!