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Between show business and marriage, the pantsless artiste. "Hoofing is all right, but there's no future in it." The gambling groom (Fred Astaire) misses his own wedding so he must prove his monetary responsibility, $25,000 gets back the bride (Betty Furness) so off to New York, riding the rails in top hat and tails. "To know how to dance is to know how to control oneself" is the motto of the academy where Ginger Rogers teaches, run by Eric Blore with pencil mustache and polka-dot bow tie. ("He's hissing at me again, the swan," snaps Helen Broderick from the reception desk.) Astaire feigns clunkiness on the ballroom floor before gliding with his frustrated instructor and nabbing her an audition at the Silver Slipper club—jokes plus lyricism, the George Stevens mise en scène. (Accordingly, "The Way You Look Tonight" throbs with such sublimity that the heroine forgets she's got a scalp full of shampoo suds.) Sandrich's full-figure shots are enhanced with a mobile crane, "Waltz in Swing Time" is possibly the pair's most virtuosic swirl while "Bojangles of Harlem" triplicates the acrobatic shadows from Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight. "Would you say he was crazy, or am I?" "I wouldn't say." Victor Moore's timorous Papageno teams up with Broderick for a railing-smashing mock-pirouette, Astaire meanwhile struggles mightily with the temptation of falling in love with Rogers under a gentle snowfall, "A Fine Romance." ("We should be like a couple of hot tomatoes / But you're as cold as yesterday's mashed potatoes...") Contemplating the potential end of their partnership, "Never Gonna Dance" is an aching miracle of romantic loss, she spins out of the frame and he shrinks in his tuxedo. Hugo's "laughter is sunshine" suffuses a stretto that wondrously distillates classic Hollywood, frigid clouds dissipating on a painted backdrop. Cinematography by David Abel. With Georges Metaxa, John Harrington, and Landers Stevens. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |