I loved this movie from the get-go.
Last night’s movie (Follow the Fleet) was too full of, well, fleet stuff. The Navy. Not enough Fred and Ginger, and barely any elegant gowns and tails.
Swing Time is almost totally gowns and tails. It’s sublime dance numbers, along with memorable music and wonderful lyrics, supplied by Jerome Kern (music) and Dorothy Fields (lyrics). Plus, Eric Blore is back. Yay!
If you want to know the plot, visit its entry on Wikipedia.
Astaire and Rogers have never looked or danced better.
“Pick Yourself Up” is their first dance number, and it’s a lot of fun. Fun lyrics, too.
The number “Bojangles of Harlem” in which Astaire (in black face) pays tribute to African-American dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, “the most highly paid black American entertainer in America during the first half of the twentieth century,” (according to Wikipedia) is a tour-de-force for Astaire. He dances with three shadow images of himself in a number that took three full days to shoot.
The Astaire-Rogers dance number that most people call their greatest (and most poignant) is “Never Gonna Dance.” It’s a lush number on an expansive, glittering set, with Fred and Ginger decked out in their finest.
I enjoyed this movie so much I’m going to seek out the Criterion Blu-ray edition of Swing Time released earlier this year. (In case you don’t know, Criterion is the be-all, end-all company for film buffs.)
I thought Top Hat was the best Astair-Rogers movie until I saw Swing Time.
This is a very fine film, and one of the best examples of Fred Astaire’s talent I’ve ever seen.
The special features on this DVD are fun to watch, too. One of the features discusses every dance number, explaining what’s going on in each.