DVD Review: Mark Sandrich’s Top Hat on Warner Home Video

Top Hat is Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’s archetypal movie.

Top HatViewed objectively, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’s partnership shouldn’t have worked. He was lighter than air and obsessed with dance. She was a solid, apple-cheeked chorus girl type who wanted to prove herself as a dramatic actress. Technically, she wasn’t up to his standard in the way of later partners like Eleanor Powell and Cyd Charisse. Rogers would be shooting other films while Astaire rehearsed their dance numbers with choreographer Hermes Pan, and she’d have to come in to learn a dance that hadn’t been set on her originally. They also didn’t really like each other much in real life.

Yet on screen they’re magical. Katharine Hepburn’s famous comment about how Astaire gave Rogers class and she gave him sex is true, if glib. Aside from a certain unexplainable X factor that has to do with the right place (RKO) at the right time (the mid-’30s), I’d say that their big dramatic dances work so beautifully because Astaire recognized the large disappointment behind Rogers’s seemingly unflappable reserve. Perhaps he had little use for her off screen, but on screen he responds sensitively to her hidden pain. The way he danced away her doubts is among the most moving (and most narcotically elating) images in film. Her barely perceptible awkwardness as a dancer paid off for audiences. After seeing them together, every woman wanted to dance with Astaire, and Rogers made them feel that they could.

Top Hat is their archetypal film. Every musical number works, and the mistaken-identity plot is pleasant enough, even if there’s too much emphatic dithering from the supporting players toward the end (Eric Blore is a pain, but Helen Broderick’s sour tolerance still gets laughs). Astaire’s first solo, “No Strings,” is wonderfully suited to his breezy style. Jerry’s (Astaire) loud tapping wakes up Dale (Rogers), who’s in the suite below his, and he makes it up to her by scattering some sand on the floor and putting her to sleep with some slow, caressing steps—one of the most romantic moments in Astaire and Rogers’s films. Their courtship is charming, especially in their superb “Isn’t It a Lovely Day to Be Caught in the Rain” number.

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But nothing can top “Cheek To Cheek,” perhaps their best romantic dance. Rogers’s feather dress makes her seem as if she’s floating, especially when Astaire ends the dance with some lifts and a dreamy backbend. Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo excerpts this number when Mia Farrow’s movie-mad character is ready to give up on life. Whenever I see “Cheek To Cheek,” I cannot get Farrow’s shy, hopeful face out of my mind. She stands in for all the Depression audiences who, like drug users, escaped into dream-world films like Top Hat.

Image/Sound

There’s some light speckling at times, but the image is acceptable, and the sound is up to par.

Extras

There’s a slightly awkward but informative commentary by Astaire’s daughter Ava and Larry Billman, a featurette on the film called “On Top: Inside the Success of Top Hat,” a “comedy” short with Bob Hope titled “Watch the Birdie,” and the Tex Avery cartoon “Page Miss Glory.”

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Overall

An essential film.

Score: 
 Cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton, Helen Broderick, Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore  Director: Mark Sandrich  Screenwriter: Allan Scott, Dwight Taylor  Distributor: Warner Home Video  Running Time: 100 min  Rating: NR  Year: 1935  Release Date: August 16, 2005  Buy: Video

Dan Callahan

Dan Callahan’s books include The Camera Lies: Acting for Hitchcock , Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman, and Vanessa: The Life of Vanessa Redgrave. He has written about film for Sight & Sound, Film Comment, Nylon, The Village Voice, and more.

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