Synopsis:
As always with Fred Astaire, it's about dancing. Fred's character Peter.P.Peters is a ballet dancer. He secretly wants to blend ballet dancing with the modern day jazz dancing. Peters sees a picture of the famous tap dancer Linda Keene (Rodgers) and falls in love with her. Unfortunately for him, she's already taken and doesn't really warm to him when they first meet. They get false rumors from the media, claiming that they are married and eventually they get married in New Jersey, so that they can get divorced and Keene can marry her Fiancee. Of course, after getting married, she doesn't really want to divorce him, but with a few hiccups she leaves him and only comes back on his Broadway ballet show to serve him his divorce summons. It's never clear if they divorce or not.
Cast List:
- Fred Astaire as Peter P. "Petrov" Peters
- Ginger Rogers as Linda Keene
- Edward Everett Horton as Jeffrey Baird
- Eric Blore as Cecil Flintridge
- Jerome Cowan as Arthur Miller
- Ketti Gallian as Lady Denise Tarrington
- William Brisbane as Jim Montgomery
- Harriet Hoctor as herself
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oYh1ycMTAs
Just a feel for the blend of jazz, tap and ballroom. The dancing in this clip is spectacular for the period of time.
Review:
George Gershwin's dance scenes are unchallenged. Gershwin writes a different dance for each scene and blends the modern jazz with the ballet to fabulous effect. It is a musical that in some ways is almost similar to Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Starlight Express'. A musical that has to be dazzling and magical. The plot is a typical 1930's plot and therefore to make the film something more than everything else that was out there at the time, Gershwin had to develop breathtaking dance scenes, he had to bring something entirely new to the table.
I don't know how famous Astaire and Rodgers were but i certainly didn't grow up with the same knowledge about them as i had for Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. You only had to see their name on the cover of a film for it to be packed out in the cinema with ques going to the end of the road and round the roundabout.
Rodgers and Astaire provide something different. It could be contested that what you are looking at is more like an older 'Dirty Dancing' or 'Take The Lead'. Films that are entirely about dancing but merge and blend the traditional ballroom dancing with other elements.
I'm taking a look through the hit songs in this film and I have got to be completely honest and say that the only name i recognize is: 'Lets call the whole thing off'. According to Wikipedia, this film contains the largest score of Gershwin music, which is somewhat surprising because George and Ira Gershwin also wrote the music for the hit musicals 'Funny Face' and 'Lady be Good!'
Let's not forget that the requirement at this time to be in a musical was that you had to be able to sing and dance. We as the younger audience who didn't grow up going to the cinema to watch these films, often overlook the huge role that the leads play in their films. Bing Crosby wrote most of the music for the films that he was in, collaborating with the likes of Danny Kay, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly and Louis Armstrong. Fred Astaire, being a dancer, choreographed all the dance scenes for the hit numbers in this film. Which tells me that I should judge the film on its dancing and not on the music as such, so that is what I am going to do! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS9rCo-sA9Q Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers performing the last number of the film 'Shall we dance'.
Again Wikipedia informs me that this film made less than half the amount that the previous Astaire/Rodgers film had made. This isn't important to me, I appreciate musicals for their singing, dancing and comedy. The box office success tells me nothing about an old fashioned musical (it can be questioned as to weather it really tells me anything about musicals being released today). It just means that it didn't appeal to the audience as much as the previous films had done, but that can be accounted for by the audience. What is popular with the audience this year doesn't mean that films of the same genre will be popular next year. The point of this blog is to re-asses and credit films. Very few musicals that flop on opening night/box office/within the first week are actually bad musicals. You only have to look at Lloyd Webber's 'Evita' to know that this is true. It flopped because it was about the situation in Argentina and that all changed suddenly, within the first week of it's opening.
Conclusion:
Now I don't know much about Tap dancing and can't really appreciate it properly but I can appreciate the ballet and ballroom dancing that also takes place. I wrote that it was somewhat similar to Starlight Express... I don't mean that the musical takes place on roller blades, it doesn't. What I mean is that once you have seen it, it looses its magic slightly the second and third time round.
Exceptionally comical, i'll give it that, however, it is not as easy to watch as something like high society. I'm sure someone who was trained in ballet (that which I am not) will disagree with me. While trying to feature Jazz dancing (to be predicted by the Gershwin's), it does not really have any jazzy songs, certainly not in the same way that Louis, Bing and Danny do jazz.
Pushing all that aside, it's still a great film, especially as it is in black and white and is certainly does not require too much brain power... making a nice film to relax to at the end of the week.
It is almost unanimously agreed that this film is not his best film for dancing, even so, it's a great icon of what film producers were trying to do in the 1930's. Almost like taking Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake' and making a film of it (but not Disney). The idea that you can have a film almost entirely about dancing that doesn't really need a story line is a priceless idea and one that hasn't really made it in today's age. I can probably list the films that are really about dancing on my hands and would probably have trouble trying to think of more than ten.
So my overall conclusion is that, with a cup of coffee (or hot chocolate) and some popcorn, this was a really good way to start my week and certainly didn't have me wanting to vomit or hide (as the next film will have me doing).
Is it a good film?... I think so... would I watch it regularly?... probably not, it's not that kind of film.
If you haven't seen it, take a chance on it. Watch it and then post your comments for us!
I realised that we haven't explained what we are doing and why...
My sister and I have set ourselves a challenge to watch 120 films in 2014 and then post about them! We aim to watch about 2 films a week.
We can't watch films that we have both seen and the sister that has seen the film doesn't post about it.
We have films from most categories. Feel free to comment as we go along.
Hopefully... the next post should be 'A History Of Violence'... watch out for it!
See you all soon.
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