Top Hat - Irving Berlin

My dad was a milkman. Which meant he got up very early in the morning and went to bed very early in the evenings.

My mother would sometimes let me stay up later than I should to keep her company. She liked to watch films on the television, particularly musicals starring Astaire and Rogers.

I watched in amazement as Fred danced on the ceiling (Royal Wedding) and caressed a hat stand (Royal Wedding) or elevated his cane (Puttin’ on the Ritz). In an era of otherwise undistinguished films these were moments of cinema genius.

Later, of course, as rock music came to dominate my musical taste, soggy old RKO musicals were contemptuously dismissed. The plots were ludicrous, the costumes were outlandish (even in the time the films were made, what percentage of the population wore white tie and tails?) and the jokes were pitiable.

Yet here I am, proposing that you should take a look at a black and white film of 1935.

First of all the sets are astonishing. No musical could be described as Realist, but every scene distorts reality through the lens of Hollywood. The absurd depiction of Venice, using two sound stages, is a case in point.

Ginger Rogers, famously doing everything that Astaire did but going backwards and in high heels, has an indefinable wildness about her. In the famous Cheek to Cheek number, she demanded to be allowed to design her own dress with the result that the feathers she insisted on attaching came off as she danced. Astaire nicknamed her ‘Feathers’ for the rest of their partnership.

However, the main reason for watching the film is, of course, the Irving Berlin score and the dance sequences. Of these, Cheek to Cheek is flawless.

Beginning on a floor with other dancers, it rapidly progresses to an enormous balcony that is decorated in a style most approved of by Hollywood in the 30s. The couple’s dancing represents a genuine progression in the narrative. He is baffled by her refusal to take his advances seriously: she is conflicted by the mistaken identity plot device.

As they dance, he seems to win her over as excitement builds with the music. In his arms she goes into a series of astonishing backbends, each one deeper than the last, accompanied by spins (this was what dislodged the feathers!). But the music dies, they promenade to a wall at the back of the set and she walks away, their relationship still unresolved.

Five full minutes of perfection.