The Gay Divorcee/Top Hat

While reading Morris Dickstein's Dancing in the Dark it occurred to me I had never seen a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie. I am embarking on addressing that, and have now seen two of their films, The Gay Divorcee and Top Hat.

The two first appeared together in Flying Down to Rio, but The Gay Divorcee was the first film that paired them as stars. It was released in 1934, and Top Hat came along in 1935. In all they would make ten films together, and their names are iconic even to those who have never seen them, whether it be as examples of dancers, or just as a symbol of a kind of posh elegance that doesn't exist anymore.

The films have almost identical plots, which are gruel-thin: Astaire, playing an American dancer in England, meets Rogers and is instantly smitten, but she finds him annoying. He doggedly pursues her, and she acquiesces after dancing with him. But a case of mistaken identity leads her to believe he's a cad. All is set right, though, and the two dance in a big production number before getting married. The films also share a stock company of character actors: Edward Everett Horton as Astaire's fussy best friend, Eric Rhodes as a pompous Italian, and Eric Blore as a dutiful servant of some sorts (in Gay Divorcee he's a waiter, in Top Hat a valet).

The Gay Divorcee is a little racier. I'm not sure if it's pre-Code, but it has a few moments of eyebrow raising. Horton shares a dance number with Betty Grable called "Let's Knock Knees," a clear euphemism for sex if there ever was one, and after Astaire and Rogers share a passioned dance to Cole Porter's "Night and Day" she collapses in a chair and he helpfully asks her, "Cigarette?" The plot mechanism is that Rogers is seeking a divorce, and apparently in those days you could only get one by proving adultery, so a cottage industry had developed of men who would, for a fee, be caught in a hotel room with a woman (though no actual adultery took place). It's a shame this practice no longer exists, that sounds like a job I could do.

The Gay Divorcee seems, almost eighty years later, to be a charming artifact of yesteryear, that I watched with a smile but without much excitement. Other than "Night and Day," the only musical number worth remembering is the nearly twenty-minute production of "The Continental" (it would win the very first Oscar for Best Song). And may I add, respectfully, that those days were not kind to women's appearances? Rogers was only 23 when this film was made, but she looks ten years older, and the style of the time seemed to be to make women, no matter how young, look older and dowdier, by means of makeup and hairstyles.

Top Hat, though sharing a bare-bones plot and the same structure of comedy and dance numbers, is a far superior movie. Both were produced by Pandro S. Berman and directed by Mark Sandrich, but this one gets it right. Astaire is once again a dancer, and Horton is producing his show in London. He pursues Rogers, but she thinks he's Horton, who is married. They end up in Venice, and Astaire continues to pursue her, and they share a dance to Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek," which is one of the most exquisite musical numbers in cinema history. Astaire insisted on his dances to be filmed in long takes, with the bodies of the dancers seen in full figure (as contrasted with those directed by Busby Berkeley, who used closeups and quick cuts). The result is silver-screen magic, with the two moving beautifully together, he in white tie and tails, and she in a feathered dress. And to give full credit to Rogers, the emotions that crossed her face during their musical numbers were perfect--they end the dance, and she's in love, but she still thinks he's married, and you can see every complicated emotion she's going through without her saying a word.

I'll be commenting on four more of their films in this space over the next week or so.