DVD of the Week
#8 - Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)"I just put my feet in the air and move them around," Fred Astaire once said. And from his screen debut in 1933 until his fourth and final retirement from musicals in 1976 (!), that spectacle made him perhaps the most beloved of all movie stars.
Top Hat was the fourth of nine films he made with Ginger Rogers during the 1930s: near-mythic movies that offered transcendent escapism to Depression-era audiences.
The films were plotted as graphs on the walls of RKO studios, with jokes, songs and what little exposition was required inserted at intervals. But the stodginess that implies is nowhere to be seen in these blissful dreams.
With mammoth, twinkling art-deco sets created under the direction of Van Nest Polglase and tunes from songwriters like Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and George Gershwin, they're fluff of the most delicious variety. Like candy floss, then, I suppose.
Top Hat is typical of the series, with the lush romanticism of the dances complemented perfectly by the agreeably daft plot contrivances. The supporting cast is filled with the usual talented farceurs, led by Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore and Erik Rhodes. Horton's legendary delayed double-takes are in full effect.
Fred is an affable playboy who falls for model Ginger, but - due to reasons too silly to go into here - she's convinced he's married. And an adulterous wretch. That mistaken identity plot trundles on for most of the film and provides an extraordinary number of laughs.
The music is sublime, with all five of the Irving Berlin numbers emerging as classics.
'No Strings' is a solo tap for Fred, danced in a hotel room. The famous 'Top Hat, White Tie and Tails' is a clever production number. The epic 'Piccolino' recalls 'The Continental' (from
The Gay Divorcee, Oscar winner for Best Song), while 'Isn't It a Lovely Day (To Be Caught in the Rain)' and 'Cheek to Cheek' are two of Fred and Ginger's greatest dances together.
The connotations of the latter: love conquering all at a time of considerable adversity, have seen the
Top Hat version used in films as varied as
The Purple Rose of Cairo and
The English Patient.
Despite tough competition from
The Gay Divorcee and
Swing Time,
Top Hat is my favourite Fred and Ginger movie. It's also my favourite musical of all time - a glorious paean to love and song that also finds time to put a frozen steak on Edward Everett Horton's face. And it doesn't get much better than that.
Top Hat is available on DVD from Universal Pictures for around £5.DVD of the Week archive:
#1 - Let's Get Lost (Bruce Weber, 1988)
#2 - Charley Varrick (Don Siegel, 1973)
#3 - The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934)
#4 - The Raven (Lew Landers, 1935)
#5 - The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1943)
#6 - Written and Directed by Preston Sturges (Preston Sturges, 1940-44)
#7 – The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992)
