Astaire/Rogers - maybe their best film and the best DVD package
"Swing Time", the 6th of the Astaire/Rogers films, is often considered their best. In this one, the farce has been replaced with a straight musical romance and the film is accordingly richer. Here are some of the highlights:

- a much more 3 dimensional performance from Rogers whose makeup has been simplified and looks much better. She really benefits from the thoughtful direction of George Stevens, with whom she became romantically involved at the time.
- unusual and interesting orchestrations with a different sound to the previous films. Lisen to the harpsichord like sound of "Bojangles".
- outstanding songs from Jerome Kern: the jolly "Pick yourself Up", the exhilarating "Waltz in Swing Time", the spectacular "Bojangles of Harlem" and the devastating "Never Gonna Dance" - every number a showstopper.

This superb film benefits from a good print and a great DVD package. In contrast to the dreadful commentary on "Top Hat", Astaire author John Mueller provided an outstanding perfectly paced commentary telling us interesting detail about all the performers, the construction of the dances, the music and the director - invaluable. There is also an excellent featurette about the film using contemporary interviews of historians, dancers etc, an amusing cartoon sending up Bing Crosby, the trailer of the film and a comprehensive musical short featuring swing and some well staged and surprising numbers.

This is the best DVD in the Astaire/Rogers sets not only because the film is so good but the extras are too.

Not to be carried away, but this is one of the best musicals Hollywood has ever produced
"Listen," says exasperated dance teacher Penny Carroll to her two-left feet customer, Lucky Garnett, "No one could teach you to dance in a million years. Take my advice and save your money!"

We can't help smiling because Penny is played by Ginger Rogers, and the clumsy Lucky, who saw Penny on the street and was smitten, then finagled his way to the dance studio to meet her, is Fred Astaire. But Penny's boss overhears her comment and fires her on the spot. Lucky comes to the rescue. "Now, umm... how did you say that last step went?" he asks Penny. "Oh, yes!" And with that he swings her out to the dance floor and they launch into "Pick Yourself Up," one of the most expert and cheery fast tap polkas you'll ever hope to see.

Some say Swing Time is the best of the Astaire-Rogers movies. Other say that honor goes to Top Hat. I say, "Who cares?" Both are superb. For many, what sets Swing Time apart is the extraordinarily blending of the incomparable dancing and the rich Jerome Kern-Dorothy Fields songs. The book isn't much -- boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back. The usual suspects make up the comedy support, in this case Eric Blore as the dance studio owner, Helen Broderick (who was Broderick Crawford's mother) as Penny's best friend, and Victor Moore, who trails after Lucky.

For any musical to work, the leads must be special, the music must be extraordinary and the production numbers must be memorable. On any scale, in my opinion, Swing Time does it. Just look at the numbers. In addition to "Pick Yourself Up, there's...

"The Way You Look Tonight." If you can't hear the melody behind these words, you need to listen to more good music.
Someday,
When I'm awfully low
And the world is cold,
I will feel a glow just thinking of you
And the way you look tonight.

Yes, you're lovely
With your smile so warm
And your cheek so soft.
There is nothing for me but to love you
Just the way you look tonight.

With each word your tenderness grows,
Tearing my fear apart.
And that smile that wrinkles your nose,
Touches my foolish heart.

Lovely,
Never, never change.
Keep that breathless charm.
Won't you please arrange it, 'cause I love you
Just the way you look tonight...
Just the way you look tonight.
Astaire is at the piano singing this while Rogers is in the next room washing her hair, not feeling too beautiful and with suds all over her head. As a declaration of affection and love, it's tender, romantic and funny. For once the Academy Awards got things right. It won the 1936 Oscar for best song.

"Waltz in Swing Time" is a lush, romantic ballroom dream, with Astaire and Rogers showing their incomparable stuff on a nightclub dance floor. There's no song or words, just an incredible series of melodies built by Hal Borne from themes provided by Kern, Robert Russell Bennett and Borne. Even if you know nothing about dance, and I'm one, Astaire and Rogers are mesmerizing.

"A Fine Romance" is a rueful romantic comedy number sung by Rogers in the snow, while Astaire tries to discourage her affections.

"Bojangles of Harlem," danced in blackface by Astaire as a tribute to Bill Robinson, features incredible tap dancing. And it may be the only blackface number watchable today without flinching. Astaire gives it to us in three parts; a production tap number with a chorus line of dancers, a tap routine with Astaire and three of his shadows and then a single tap routine. In the last part, try to keep track of the syncopated, complicated coordination of shoe taps and hand clappers that Astaire manages without showing an iota of effort.

"Never Gonna Dance" is one of the great stories of broken romance told in dance. It's played out in bold steps and sweeps, up a dramatic stairway and across gleaming black floors. Here's that word again...extraordinary.

If I had to list the Hollywood musicals I like best they'd be Swing Time, Top Hat, Love Me Tonight, Singin' in the Rain and The Band Wagon. It's not surprising that Astaire has three of them. In a way, Swing Time and Top Hat give as good a view as anything of what Hollywood's Thirties sophistication was all about. This is a world where Fred wears a dinner jacket or tails as effortlessly as you or I might wear slacks, where Ginger has gowns that are memorably stylish (just look at the feathered number she wears dancing "Cheek to Cheek" in Top Hat), where fancy nightclubs feature brilliantined floors and apartments are all white and all Art Deco, where Ginger wisecracks and Fred charms. It's a world long gone, but at least we have Swing Time on DVD. It's one of the Fred and Ginger movies from the Astaire & Rogers Collection, Volumes One and Two, and can be bought separately. Swing Time looks first class on DVD and has some interesting extras. The commentary track is by John Mueller, the author of Astaire Dancing. It and Arlene Croce's The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book are essential reading for fans of Astaire.

Silly to Sublime -- Or Swinging-- in Seconds
Okay, let's make one thing clear: the ten movies Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made, for RKO Radio Pictures, as it was then called, all have silly plots, and "Swing Time" is no exception. But they are what they are, and all there is.

"Swing Time's" plot, if you can call it that, as cobbled together by Astaire's frequent writer/collaborators, Howard Lindsay and Allan Scott, revolves around cuffs on striped pants. But, as produced by Pandro S. Berman, who threw enough money at the screen for Astaire pictures -- the sets are lovely, cool, black and white, shadowed art nouveau creations; and as directed by Oscar-winning George Stevens, the plot keeps perking along for a swift 104 minutes. Music, by Jerome Kern, with lyrics by Dorothy Fields, ranges from the happy "Pick Yourself Up," to the sublime, Oscar-winning "The Way You Look Tonight," and the moving "Never Gonna Dance." And then there's the dancing, never matched, never bettered.

Astaire and Rogers were still relatively new together at this point: Katherine Hepburn memorably quipped that he brought her class; she brought him sex appeal. But, having lost his first partner, his sister Adele, in a marriage to English nobility -- see "Royal Wedding," Astaire was reluctant to be assigned a steady partner again. The leads are backed by regulars from Astaire's Broadway, and vaudeville past. Victor Moore reprises his many comic roles, as do Eric Blore and Helen Broderick: and why was her character always called Madge or Mabel? A young Betty Furness makes one of her few big screen appearances, before getting chummy with Frigidaire. Georges Metaxa plays the usual Erik Rhodes part, as the swarthy suitor who loses Rogers to Astaire.

It's said that, great composer that he was, Kern didn't swing, and that's what Astaire always wanted from him. But Kern and Astaire surely swing in the great "Bojangles" number, with those dancing shadows on the curtains behind the hoofer. But beware, the politically correct: Astaire, not really that long out of vaudeville at this point, dons blackface for this.

Swing Time
George Stevens's classic Astaire-Rogers entry too often takes a back seat to the prior year's "Top Hat", and shouldn't, as it's every bit as good. The dancing sequences are unmatched in the series, particularly the "Bojangles of Harlem" number, and the gossamer Kern-Fields score includes the immortal "The Way You Look Tonight", and the overlooked "Never Gonna Dance", among others. Victor Moore provides appealing comic relief, along with "Top Hat" veterans Eric Blore and Helen Broderick. One of the screen's tip-top musicals.

La crème de la crème.

You cannot go wrong with any of the Fred and Ginger movies, but this one is la crème de la crème.

Why? As Eric Blore says, for the sheer heaven of the "Pick Yourself Up" number, as you watch their feet fly across the dance floor, with Fred in trademark formal attire (in the morning my dears but it fits the lighthearted plot!)and Ginger in the pert black and white knee length dress that lets you see with your very own eyes what an incredibly nimble partner she was for the incomparable Astaire.

This is the ultimate in their "we are making it up as we go along" dances. Fred - who is supposed to be having his first dance lesson of his life - bowls over Ginger and dance school owner Eric Blore by his fancy footwork to demonstrate just how much Ginger has "taught him" and thereby gets her job back for her. Ginger proves to be quite the quick study, as she more than holds her own with Fred.

The number displays many of Fred's concepts about how such dances should be filmed--with one camera that can pan but does not move, with three different tempos to keep things lively, and with action that moves the plot forward. By the end of the dance, Ginger has changed her mind about Fred, and has fallen in love, even though she will change her mind several more times before the final scene.

This is what dancing is meant to be. Watch Ginger watch Fred (which in addition to her agility on the dance floor is the secret to their on screen chemistry).

Why do other dance teams not get that? You aren't on the dance floor to show off how great you are to others; you are there to connect with your partner. That is why Fred's later dance in another film with Eleanor Powell, "Begin the Beguine", while a tour de force, in the end, doesn't work romantically. Powell is the best female dancer, but not the best PARTNER, that Fred ever danced with. She is way too into her own dancing to make us believe that she cares a fig for Fred or anyone else for that matter.

(As an aside, Powell is more believable romantically in her playful scenes with Jimmy Stewart in "Born to Dance"' perhaps she was less intimidated by his reputatin than by Fred's?)


In contrast, every time Ginger looks at Fred, we know that the world has become just the two of them and the rest of us are chopped liver.

If the couples in modern ballroom dance competitions would allow themselves to look at each other in this way, it would ratchet up the things, considerably.

Watch also how Ginger allows an air of frivolity and nonchalance to flash toward the camera.

Later in the film... No one ever looked as good shampooing her hair as does Ginger "Just the Way You Look Tonight". It is whipped cream by the way, not Fells Naphtha.

They dazzle us again in the lovely "Waltz in Swing Time." This time, we get to see a dance that, according to the plot, they had prepared ahead of time. It is a great combination of intricate steps, incorporating some of what they "made up" in "Pick Yourself Up". They end the dance by exiting off stage in a whirl of light and shadow, assisted by Venetian blinds, another Fred and Ginger trademark.

And no set in any movie before this was ever as gorgeously black and white as the grandly reopened 'Silver Sandal', in which they dance their adieux in "Never Gonna Dance"--the number famous for so many takes that it was the wee hours and Ginger's pumps were blood soaked by the time they finished it. They go up and down the double set of stairs, as the black-floored set sparkles all around them.

Enjoy the banter over "cuffs or no cuffs" and the remarkable change that comes over Betty Furness' father and household when they learn that Fred has a knack for making money. This is, after all, still the Great Depression.

But who would ever guess it, as Fred (in the part of Lucky Garnett) wins enough at gambling to make the stars and their costars Helen Broderick and Victor Moore look like a million bucks, as they motor off to the New Amsterdam in an open Dusenberg in the snow. Yes, only in Hollywood!

As the snow continues to fall, Fred and Ginger sing about their "Fine Romance" which makes it seem like they are never going to manage to sort out their differences, but wait for it, there will be a happy ending, this time in the form of a laughing finale.

This is just about the best medicine you can buy without a prescription. Enjoy!