fredkontur.com - Diary - Archives - Sunday, November 30, 2008

I wanted to go hiking today, but we had a snowstorm blow through. It only dropped about 4-6 inches, but I hate driving in the snow, and hiking through the snow can sometimes be miserable, so I decided to hole up in my apartment instead. I have a collection of five Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers movies that I've never gotten around to watching, so I decided to give those a try. The first one I watched is their most famous, Swing Time. The story is silly enough. Fred's character, "Lucky" Garnett, is an up-on-his luck gambler (hence his nickname) and dancer who is trying to get married to his hometown sweetheart. Unfortunately, her dad thinks Lucky will never make anything of himself. So, Lucky moves to New York to make his fortune. There, he meets Ginger's character, Penny Carroll. Penny and Lucky form a dance team. Inevitably, they fall in love, but Lucky can't pursue the romance because he is betrothed to someone else.

As you might imagine, things work out for Fred and Ginger. Like I said, the story is fairly silly. The characters, too, are pretty thin, and could just as easily have been called "Fred" and "Ginger" with no loss of movie illusion. Nevertheless, the Lucky gambler character is an extension of the suave Astaire persona which lets you know that no matter how bad things look, don't worry, they'll take a turn for the good soon enough. David Thompson, in his New Biographical Dictionary Film, says that, "Astaire is utterly tranquil, hence the inane playboy figures he embodies, men who exist only to walk sweetly across lounges, to preserve rigorous trouser creases and that high, carefree tone of voice."

The payoff of the movie is the dance and the songs. Goodness, the songs. Two of my all-time favorite songs are in Swing Time-- "Just the Way You Look Tonight" and "A Fine Romance". "A Fine Romance" is sung against an amazing snowscape, shown in the image at the top of this entry. I would like to hear the story behind choosing that backdrop. I'm almost positive that it is a studio set, rather than an actual location. I'm guessing that it was up for another movie, and they just used it for that one scene in Swing Time. I think that's the case because there's no special reason for the scene to take place in a winter forest. Probably, the makers of the movie noticed that all of the scenes take place in hotel rooms and night clubs, and they decided they needed an outdoor scene for a change of pace. As integral as the dance scenes are to the success of the movie, amazingly the first dance doesn't happen until almost a half-hour into the movie, when Fred, masquerading as a novice dancer, asks for a dance lesson from Ginger, whose character is a dance instructor. The climax of the movie is a 6-minute song-and-dance performance, "Never Gonna Dance". Fred and Ginger's characters are each about to marry other people, despite the fact that they love each other. Like almost all of Astaire's dances, it's filmed in a single take (there are a few cuts during the initial singing, but none after the dancing begins). In order to keep filming when the dancers went up steps, the camera was mounted on a crane. I have two favorite parts of this dance. The first is when Ginger initially breaks away from Fred after the first bit of dancing. Fred runs and grabs her. His head and hand shake before they dance again. It's an interesting thing to do, even a little bit awkward. It embodies the desperation of a lover who is trying to anything, anything at all, to keep the person he loves from getting away. My other favorite part is right before the end, when Fred spins Ginger three different times. The spins are amazing and energetic. It makes you excited to see them, especially after the somberness of the beginning of the dance. Below is a YouTube of the "Never Gonna Dance" number. I highly suggest watching the video on full screen. I've seen it about 5 times now, and it still takes my breath away, every time I see the dance.

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