Top Hat v. Swing Time

Ladies and Gentlemen, the main event this evening is the bout between two champions of the silver screen and the winner will be rewarded a position in my top 100.


                                                                         

In this corner we have Top Hat, an Academy Award best picture nominee for 1935, #15 in the AFI’s list of best musicals, and supported by corner man Irving Berlin.        

                     

And in this corner we have Swing Time, conceivably an underdog but definitely no Tomato Can. Having an Academy Award win for best song “The Way You Look Tonight” and the capable second of Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields, makes this 1936 film a serious contender.






Pound for pound they will be judged in seven rounds of grueling competition. With the skill level of these greats, it is sure to go to the scorecards for a final decision.

Round 1
The screwball comedy premise: masking attraction with an antagonistic front. Fred and Ginger’s variation on the theme: Astaire’s actions propel him to fall in love and for Ginger to fall in hate.

TH: Fred’s nocturnal tap dancing wakes Ginger and she confronts his inconsiderate behavior. Then she mistakenly thinks he’s her friend’s husband.

ST: Ginger thinks Fred has stolen a quarter from her purse and in trying to make things right, Fred accidentally gets her fired from her job as a dance instructor.

Both serviceable show launchers, but this round goes to Top Hat. The tap dance scene is funny and endearing. The familiar mistaken identity device gets a little long in the tooth, but it sets up some good comedy and the sweet conflict for the “Cheek to Cheek” dance. In Swing Time, Fred’s actions make for a superb challenge dance (see round 2), but he needs to continue to make other blunders to keep Ginger sufficiently angry.


Round 2
The Challenge Dance: advance, retreat, conflict makes way for cooperation.

TH: Fred and Ginger get caught in a storm and seek refuge in a pavilion. He persuades her with a complex dance to call a truce.                                                                                                                 
ST: Fred wants to help Ginger get her job back so shows the boss how well he can dance because of her instruction.

Swing Time wins this one. “Isn’t this a Lovely Day to be Caught in the Rain” may have better examples of dance steps that illustrate the conflict/cooperation, but “Pick Yourself Up” is technically intricate and humorously emerges right from the plot. 

Round 3
Supporting Cast: Helen Broderick and Eric Blore

Top Hat best utilizes these two actors. Helen delivers some great dead pan lines that raised the show’s comedy level up much higher. Eric isn’t laugh out loud funny, but does some interesting physical humor and gets to articulately insult a police officer. I don't find either one of them is particularly funny in Swing Time and think their talents are a bit squandered.


Round 4
Fred Astaire Specialty Song and Dance

This might not be a popular verdict. The iconic “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails” should be the winner of this round but I’m going to go with “Bojangles of Harlem” in Swing Time.

My belief is that Fred’s was paying a loving tribute to Bill Robinson, who had been an influence on his dancing. The black face is jarring, but with the filter of what I think was the intent, it allows me to watch and enjoy the prowess and innovation.

Round 5
Best Bittersweet Romantic Dance

I’m going to get in trouble with this one too. “Cheek to Cheek” is a flight of fancy. Ginger is swept away and doesn’t come back to reality until after the notes fade away. The dips and lifts are beautiful. But, I’m going for bittersweet as the emphasis. “Never Gonna Dance” is charged with emotion and despair. The dancing is breathtaking and the undercurrents remind me that Fred and Ginger are not just great dancers, but believable actors as well. Swing Time wins this round.


Round 6
Best Dress

Oh

those controversial feathers wafting in the air and onto the dance floor. Ginger designed the dress for the "Cheek to Cheek" dance in Top Hat and with her mother stood up to Fred’s disapproval. Good for them and good for us. I watch the dance carefully to see if I can find any trace of Fred’s disgust, but I can’t. Now that’s a professional.


Round 7
Best Song

“Cheek to Cheek” is top tier, but I give this round to “The Way You Look Tonight” from Swing Time. It’s played over part of “Never Gonna Dance” and makes me want to cry, it’s so beautiful.


Fouls: -½ point each

Swing Time
Forced Hilarity (band leader's pants) This is going to be an issue as well when I get to A Star is Born.
Convertible in the winter (All for a windshield wiper/snow gag)
Georges Metaxa (the band leader who can't sing or act)

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Well folks, It’s been a barnburner, but Top Hat has been decided the winner by a mere ½ point. It looks like my top 100 needs some adjustments to accommodate both of these fine films.

Bicycle Thieves

In his father’s shadow, the little man mirrors step for step. The dance changes when he is commanded or rebuked and parallels at a distance. Each time the mood of the choreography changes, the boy considers, and then makes adjustments. 

Sometimes the directions are confusing. Should he enjoy his sandwich or mourn for the loss of future meals? What is the correct procedure for tracking a man down during a church service? Are his concerted efforts worthwhile, since his father is preoccupied and flawed? Ah yes, for he is also dedicated and resolute. 

Much can be learned from a partner like that.

Kes

Being alone isn’t lonely, for there no one judges or attacks or ignores. It’s in the presence of those things that, through rejection, bring isolation.

When Billy’s alone, the voices that tell him he’s bad are quieted enough that his own voice can say, “Maybe I am sometimes, but I’m not that bad.” No one else is going to defend him, so it might as well be he.  It’s such a small, pitiful defense, wrought with self doubt and confusion that his belief in it is tenuous.  To succeed in training a kestrel, strengthens that voice and to speak and be heard about that success validates him even more.

The director Ken Loach said, “This isn’t the way the world has to be. You don’t have to destroy all the Billy Caspers of your generation for the world to keep turning.” 

Questions run through my head. What creates a despondent family or community? What can a film like this be a catalyst for? Am I the headmaster or the empathetic teacher, or somewhere in between? Am I encouraging others to have a voice? Do I have a voice? And so forth. Some movies I can watch and forget by the next day. Others are there for a lifetime--this is one of the latter.


Unrelated, but I was kind of fascinated with the school's architecture.

True Grit (2010)

I reckon there’s been a lot of misjudging around these parts and the biggest culprit is likely to be me. Now the Duke cast a mighty long shadow and it’s regrettable that I took so long to walk out from underneath it to lift my face to the sepiad sun. For a collaboration of a whole passel of people commenced to not only fill those big boots, but made an effectual artistic impression as well.

Saturated with aged colors and textures, the town and costumes are the first signs that give me the notion I’m in for a full immersion and then it’s a done deal when the words come. Words flowing out, out of all manner of mouths: determined, grizzled, tongue mangled, slack jawed, spittle flying. I watch again with the subtitles so I can gather up all of the words that had fallen past me. How came Mattie by way of her vocabulary? Just fourteen and out trading a horse trader? I’m envious and in want of them powerful words. There’s no better sport than word sparring and I figure the film is chuck full of them--lively times.

Memorable scenes are aplenty, but I’m tied up with the starlit run. The great big night sky gives the illusion that, borrowing a line from Clark Gable, “the stars are so close over your head, you feel you could reach up and stir them around.” Worry catches in my throat and I hold out little hope for that horse.

As for misjudging, it’s like what that documentary coach said about how football doesn’t build character, but reveals it. Same goes for man hunting in Choctaw Territory. That particular brand of adversity reveals a lot about the characters of a so called, unattractive girl, a buck-skinned dandy and a washed up bushwhacker marshal. As I see it, observation gives credence to a person, not his trappings. I also fetch something else from this tale. I’d been reading some dialogue from Before Sunrise and the line that came back to my remembrance during this movie was “If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something.” Isn’t it in the finding of that which compels Mattie to move Cogburn to her family cemetery? After all, isn’t that what we’re all looking for, to know and be known?

42nd Street

42nd Street doesn’t look like a film that came out a few years after the introduction of sound. The influence of more than a decade of backstage musicals on Broadway carried over to help this and other films hit the boards running. Add to that the genius of the transplanted Busby Berkeley. The proscenium arch gets blown apart as the audience watches, voyeuristically, what goes on behind the scenes. The popularity of this musical subgenre can be likened to dish-the-dirt tabloids.

Stereotypes abound where not much is needed to establish a character: the ingénue, Any Time Annie, the over worked director, the world weary leading lady and the sugar daddy. What’s nice about this is that the film doesn’t get bogged down, but hums along at a brisk pace. The concept could get old, but not here. This is brand new. Let the musicals that come after deal with changing things up. I enjoyed every minute of this movie that up until now had only been seen in bits and pieces. 


Best surprise; Ruby Keeler is adorable. No wonder she was so popular.