Top Hat
Directed by Mark Sandrich | Music & Lyrics by Irving Berlin | Choreography by Astaire and Hermes Pan
USA | 1935 | Fiction | 99 min
This event is part of Global Roots Film Festival: Why Sing, Why Dance?
Top Hat is the 4th and most iconic of the movies Fred Astaire made opposite Ginger Rogers, and was the first film to be written specifically as a vehicle for Fred and Ginger. The Irving Berlin score includes "Cheek to Cheek," "Isn't it a Lovely Day?," and the jaunty title song. It centers on a typical mistaken-identity plot, with wealthy Dale Tremont (Rogers), on holiday in London and Venice, assuming that American entertainer Jerry Travers (Astaire) is the husband of her friend Madge (Helen Broderick) -- who's actually the wife of Jerry's business manager Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton)... and so it goes on.
The choreography of the dance numbers is flawless: Astaire believed that movie dance numbers should be shot in unbroken takes that ran as long as possible, and this lends a fluidity to the movement that belies the difficulty for the dancers. What Astaire and Rogers perform is an achievement in endurance as well as artistry.