Top Hat
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1990. | ||
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Top Hat is a 1935 American screwball musical comedy film in which Fred Astaire plays an American dancer named Jerry Travers, who comes to London to star in a show produced by Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton). He meets and attempts to impress Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers) to win her affection. The film also features Eric Blore as Hardwick's valet Bates, Erik Rhodes as Alberto Beddini, a fashion designer and rival for Dale's affections, and Helen Broderick as Hardwick's long-suffering wife Madge.
The film was written by Allan Scott and Dwight Taylor. It was directed by Mark Sandrich. The songs were written by Irving Berlin.
Why It Rocks
- Even though it's Astaire and Rogers’ fourth film, it's the first time a film script was written specifically for them, even if Astaire didn’t like how similar the plot was to The Gay Divorcee, or how he was cast as a straight juvenile rather than a cocky and arrogant one in the film’s first draft.
- It crystallizes all the elements that define an Astaire/Rogers film – especially how the act of dancing brought them together romantically.
- Songwriter Irving Berlin wrote six songs for the film – in his first score for Astaire, and first film work since 1930– the title tune is based in part on a routine Astaire previously performed in a Broadway show. The film's score is one of the most beguiling and popular of the 1930s. "No Strings", "Isn't This a Lovely Day?", "Top Hat", "Cheek to Cheek", and "The Piccolino" were not only popular hits at the time, but even become entries in the "Great American Songbook".
- It should be noted that this is the last Astaire/Rogers film where the music was recorded live, with a fifty-piece orchestra performing to the side of the stage.
- Irving Berlin participated in script conferences so that his songs would be well-integrated in the story, and he was present throughout production, approving the orchestrations and working closely with Astaire and Rogers to ensure that their recordings expressed his musical intentions.
- The film has a wispy plot of mistaken identity that would otherwise place the film, without its musical numbers, into the realm of screwball comedy. There’s good fun in seeing how the story devises ways for the misunderstandings to continue and prevent Fred and Ginger from getting together. It also gently satirizes the rich, starting with Edward Everett Horton’s lament that his valet believes square bowties should be worn with evening attire.
- Even though only 26 of the film’s 100 minutes include dancing, the dancing was among the highest quality ever achieved in the movies.