Note: This is #11 in my 52 Classic Movies in 52 Weeks challenge for 2009.
I admit, I wasn’t looking forward to this movie going in. I figured that if musical and dance movies were all but dead (or at best degraded to cheerleader and break dancing epics), there must be a reason for it. So I was quite surprised when I realized that I really enjoyed Swing Time.
First off, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers can really dance. I mean REALLY dance. They’re almost superhumanly fleet footed, moving with grace, speed, and precision that’s all the more impressive when you cue in to the fact that the movie doesn’t make use of quick editing cuts or body doubles. The dance numbers are all wide angle, full body shots that show the couple moving as one unit in long, uninterrupted takes. It’s really amazing and the dance numbers were easily my favorite parts of the movie.
That’s not to say that the talky bits weren’t without their charm, too. The plot follows your typical romantic comedy conventions, creating an unlikely pairing between two people out of circumstance. Astaire’s character needs to raise a big chunk of money to impress his fiance’s family, so he ends up going to New York City and partnering, almost accidentally, with Roberts’s character to hit the gambling and dancing circuits. Along the way, they fall in love despite Astaire’s amusingly quaint chastity and they have to make some decisions.
It’s all light fluffy fun that’s there to get to the dancing and singing, but it works. And I actually probably enjoyed the supporting characters of Pop and Mabel, who fill the roles of comedic relief and bumbling but loyal friends to the two headliners. Some of their lines are genuinely funny.
On a side note, I was more than a little shocked when Astaire got on stage and did a dance number called “Bojangles of Harlem” while wearing blackface. 1936 indeed. The number (mostly crazy good tap dancing and a famous sequence where Astaire dances with his shadows) actually didn’t seem that mocking, though, and a little research on the ‘net tells me that it was meant to be an homage to one of Astaire’s own idols. Still, you’d never get away with that today.
So, surprisingly good film, and just the kind of sampling I had hoped for out of this 52-in-52 project. Would I ever have sat down to watch something like Swing Time? No, absolutely not. But I’m glad I did.
Trailer below.
Also this week: Jeremy reviews Rachel Getting Married.
Blackface, wow. It really was a different era! But amen to the dancing. I remember the first time I saw “Singin’ in the Rain” how amazed I was at Gene Kelly’s dancing.