Astaire-Rogers dance again – on DVD
Penny: Does she dance very beautifully?
Lucky: Who?
Penny: The girl you’re in love with.
Lucky (staring at her, as if in a trance): Yes. Very.
Penny: The girl you’re engaged to. The girl you’re going to marry.
Lucky: Oh, I don’t know. I’ve danced with you. I’m never going to dance again.
– “Swing Time,” 1936
They did dance again, and with many others. But to many of us they’re forever linked as Fred and Ginger, perhaps the silver screen’s most purely magical partnership.
He was Frederic Austerlitz Jr. from Omaha, Neb.; she was Virginia McMath from Independence, Mo.
In a string of films in the 1930s they fell in love with each other on dance floors, in art deco nightclubs or shabby Depression dance studios.
And audiences fell in love with them and with the way that their films used graceful movement to convey emotion, to tell a story without words.
Like a long-awaited gift from movie heaven, five of their films arrived on DVD this week for the first time: “Top Hat,” “Swing Time,” “Follow the Fleet,” “Shall We Dance” and “The Barkleys of Broadway.”
They’re nicely remastered, though not perfectly restored. But what do a few little scratches matter, when we can see those glorious musical numbers again?
The numbers, set to songs by such masters as the Gershwins, Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern, bloom like flowers throughout the films. You wait patiently through the daffy plots (though top-notch comedians like Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore and Helen Broderick often made the wait pleasant) for the moments when Ginger would glide into Fred’s arms.
Actually, even calling them musical numbers feels wrong; the word seems to suggest the sort of showy extravaganza that in most pre-F&G musicals (and many afterward) usually stopped the plot cold.
In the 10 movies that Astaire and Rogers made together, the numbers became something else. Watch what happens in “Pick Yourself Up,” for example, their first dance in “Swing Time.”
She’s a dance teacher, he’s a happy-go-lucky gambler (named, appropriately, Lucky), and she’s annoyed with him. (Ginger is often annoyed with Fred in their movies, to begin with – that’s how their rhythms worked. He was hardly ever required to be annoyed with her, perhaps because Rogers played slow-burn irritation so well.)
They’re at her workplace – a dance school – and he’s pretended that he doesn’t know how to dance, falling on the floor as she tries to show him a step. Her boss observes the ill-fated lesson and promptly fires her, and Lucky is determined to make things right.
Grabbing her hand, he pulls her onto the dance floor, and the music begins – a bouncy, uptempo tune. He starts dancing, with the hopping step she was trying to teach him before, and they whirl in happy unison.
She gazes at her feet, as if she can’t quite believe what’s happening, and then looks at him – who can this new creature be? And she surrenders herself to him and to the dance, and to the irresistible silliness of the moment, giggling, and as the music gets faster and the number winds up with a final leap so effortless it seems impossible, they’ve become a team.
Every Astaire/Rogers film has a number like this, early on – in “Top Hat” it’s “Isn’t It A Lovely Day?” where they dance in the rain; in “Shall We Dance” it’s “They All Laughed,” in a swanky club; in “Follow the Fleet” it’s “Let Yourself Go,” a dance contest in a grim 10-cents-a-dance joint.
These are lighthearted romps that establish the unspoken bond between the two of them – that together, they create something magic.
Many commentators have noted over the years that Rogers, though perhaps not technically the best dancer of Astaire’s many onscreen partners, is his most memorable because of the sense of fun she brought to the partnership – that she made you believe that nothing, at that moment, could be better than dancing with Fred Astaire.
Watch her in the uptempo numbers and notice a charmingly loopy smile, which seems to sneak up almost in spite of itself: She’s having a ball and doesn’t care who knows it.
The Astaire-Rogers musicals were among the biggest hits of the 1930s, thrilling a Depression audience who needed a little fantasy in their lives. Watching them now, there’s a charming innocence to them. But there’s also a sophistication and elegance that most movies now lack and a respect for dance as a vehicle of genuine emotion that’s still rare.
As “Top Hat” ends, there’s a little reprise of the tune of “The Piccolino,” the cast-of-dozens number that they’ve led just a few minutes ago. This time, it’s just the two of them, and they’re snugly buttoned into their coats over their evening clothes. With eyes only for each other, they dance off into the future together, their tapping feet gliding over a little footbridge and into a starry Venice night.
This is as whipped-cream-with-a-cherry perfect as fantasy gets – and now, thanks to the DVDs, we can go there with them, anytime.