Top Hat
My first Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, and according to the TCM commentary, their best. It really is everything you could hope of old, Depression-era Hollywood. In glamour and elegance - the clothes, music, dancing, interior design - it holds back nothing. The only thing I found really surprising was just how good the plot is. It's a very well constructed, tight, intricate comedy of errors, timed perfectly.
The whole Rogers/Astaire cult is slightly mysterious to me. Fred Astaire doesn't quite look like a leading man - he's short and skinny and looks a little weak in the face - and Ginger Rogers looks more like a leading lady than a dancer. She has a great figure and the Harlow hair and eyebrows, but her dancing is a little stooped (perhaps because Astaire is short?) and, though technically masterful, not as animated as Astaire's.
The funny thing is, I thought she was more convincing in her nonmusical comedy, Vivacious Lady, opposite Jimmy Stewart. There she plays a nightclub queen (= questionable reputation) who falls in love with an awkward young professor (= can't tell his family whom he married). She embraces the bad girl image that goes with the hair and brows, instead of trying to play the prim society girl, and even gets into a hair-pulling, first-throwing catfight with a romantic rival.
The whole Rogers/Astaire cult is slightly mysterious to me. Fred Astaire doesn't quite look like a leading man - he's short and skinny and looks a little weak in the face - and Ginger Rogers looks more like a leading lady than a dancer. She has a great figure and the Harlow hair and eyebrows, but her dancing is a little stooped (perhaps because Astaire is short?) and, though technically masterful, not as animated as Astaire's.
The funny thing is, I thought she was more convincing in her nonmusical comedy, Vivacious Lady, opposite Jimmy Stewart. There she plays a nightclub queen (= questionable reputation) who falls in love with an awkward young professor (= can't tell his family whom he married). She embraces the bad girl image that goes with the hair and brows, instead of trying to play the prim society girl, and even gets into a hair-pulling, first-throwing catfight with a romantic rival.
posted by Rex at 10:55 PM
2 Comments:
Ah, see, I love Astaire and Rogers! Ginger's style of dancing with the raised (slightly hunched) shoulders was influenced by Irene Castle (see last Astaire-Rogers movie), and she was never formally trained, and she was often off balance, causing her to lean into Fred. Fred was trained classically, and performed for many years with his sister Adele on Broadway musical reviews, where he sang many of the Gershwin and Berlin tunes before coming to Hollywood in his 30s after his sister married and retired. The popularity of Fred Astaire was that although he wasn't very handsome or muscular, like Gene Kelly, he relied on an easy charm and innate elegance to win the ladies, something that appealed to the average man who hoped that he could be funny and chivalrous enough to make up for his lack of looks. I think the difference between Astaire and Kelly (and not really making a judgment call for or against one) is that Astaire floats on air, and Kelly drives into the ground. You should see Swing Time. It's got a beautiful dance number in it that encapsulates the entire relationship of the Astaire/Rogers characters. And, for a less obvious Kelly movie, check out It's Always Fair Weather.
I had no idea Ginger Rogers wasn't formally trained. That's pretty good.
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