Top Hat (1935)
Top Hat (1935), directed by Mark Sandrich.
quote
She: I wouldn't know you from Adam.
He: Maybe it's the way I'm dressed.
quote
Manager: We wondered if you would give up your bridal suite?
Horton: Give it up? Oh, why we---
Astaire: Well, we've hardly settled in it yet, have we angel?
Horton: No, and all our clothes... please!
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made nine of these films for RKO. Most of the budgets went into what was called the "Big White Sets", often gargantuan backdrops for the singing and dancing.
In this case we have luxurious Art Deco hotel rooms in London and Venice and a multi-stage lagoon with gondolas. These are fantasy interpretations by someone who saw pictures of Venice. From the age when rooms did not have ceilings.
Apart from the elegant dancing by Fred and Ginger we are assisted by:
Edward Everett Horton, always fussy, always funny as a married straight man.
Wisecracking Helen Broderick as his indulgent wife
Eric Blore is always a hoot as the fiercely swishy butler.
Lucille Ball has an uncredited bit part as the Flower Clerk.
Irving Berlin's famous tunes:
"No Strings (I'm Fancy Free)", which includes "So bring on the big attraction / My decks are cleared for action / I'm fancy free and free for anything fancy".
"Top Hat, White Tie and Tails"
"Cheek to Cheek". I think the choreography for this was used by four couples in Branagh's Love's Labour's Lost (2000).
On the down side: well it is a 1930s musical. Paper thin plot and the usual mistaken identity gag which lasts for the entire film. It could have been tightened up.
See the wikipedia for production problems, particularly Wardrobe: The "feathers" incident.
I don't see a North American blu-ray. The import supply is muddled, some out of print, uncertain quality. Swing Time (1936) is on Blu-ray from Criterion; there should be a box set.
