Top Hat (1935)

Official trailer

Top Hat is Mark Sandrich’s 1935 American musical comedy and the fourth of ten Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers collaborations.

The film follows American dancer Jerry Travers who falls in love with model Dale Tremont while encountering her in London and Venice. Astaire plays Travers. Rogers plays Tremont. Edward Everett Horton plays Travers’s friend Horace Hardwick. Helen Broderick plays Horace’s wife Madge. Erik Rhodes plays Italian dress designer Alberto Beddini. Eric Blore plays butler Bates. Allan Scott and Dwight Taylor wrote the screenplay.

Irving Berlin wrote the score. RKO Radio Pictures produced the film on a budget of approximately 600,000 dollars, and it grossed approximately 3.2 million dollars worldwide. The work was the second-highest-grossing film of 1935.

From the first tap to the last feather, Top Hat puts a grin on my face. The plot is silly and I couldn’t care less, because the minute the story hands the floor to Astaire and Rogers, nothing else matters to me.

The film is the Astaire-Rogers pairing at its peak and one of the classic American film musicals.

The Irving Berlin score includes songs that became standards including Cheek to Cheek, Top Hat White Tie and Tails, and Isn’t This a Lovely Day. The Astaire choreography combines tap technique with ballroom partnering at a level that pre-1935 American film hadn’t achieved. The mistaken-identity comedy plot is conventional. The dance sequences aren’t.

The result is the picture that defined what Astaire-Rogers musicals could accomplish and the standard against which the entire 1930s film musical era should be measured.

Cheek to Cheek

The Cheek to Cheek number runs approximately four minutes and is among the most accomplished single dance sequences in American film history.

Rogers wears the famous ostrich feather dress that shed feathers throughout shooting. Astaire later complained about the feathers in his nose. The sequence shows the couple dancing from intimate close work through expanding spaces. The choreography moves between conventional ballroom hold and unconventional positions that classical ballroom dance hadn’t used.

The number occurs as Travers and Tremont leave a party. The setting is a constructed terrace. The orchestra is invisible. The dance proceeds without dialogue. Astaire and Rogers had learned to communicate through movement alone after multiple films together. The years of partnership allowed them to convey emotional progression through dance phrasing that less experienced partners would have needed dialogue to deliver.

Cheek to Cheek is the reason this gets a 9 from me. Those four wordless minutes say more about falling in love than most romances manage in two hours, and the feathers Astaire grumbled about don’t bother me a bit.

The Berlin Score

Irving Berlin wrote the score on commission for the film.

The result was the first Astaire-Rogers musical with an original Berlin score instead of recycled songs. Astaire had danced to Berlin tunes on stage for years but had never met him before this film. The Top Hat commission gave him the opportunity to write for the Astaire singing voice and the Astaire-Rogers dancing combination.

The score contained five songs. Four became standards. Cheek to Cheek became the year’s biggest hit.

Isn’t This a Lovely Day, Top Hat White Tie and Tails, and No Strings followed. The hit rate exceeded what most musical commissions achieved. Berlin received a percentage of the box office instead of a flat fee. That was unusual for the period. The arrangement paid him considerably more than the standard contract would have.

Berlin’s songs are a big part of why I rate it so high. Four standards out of five songs is an absurd hit rate, and I’d put Isn’t This a Lovely Day right beside Cheek to Cheek.

The Mistaken Identity Plot

The plot depends on Tremont believing Travers is married to her friend Madge throughout most of the film. The misunderstanding is sustained through coincidences that real characters would have resolved through one conversation. The structural choice was conventional for 1935 musical comedy. Audiences accepted the device because the alternative would have ended the film thirty minutes in.

It’s the one flaw. Dale could clear up the whole mess with a single question, and the film keeps finding flimsy reasons for her not to ask it. I forgive it, since the alternative is losing the dances, but I roll my eyes at every near miss.

The convention served the dance sequences. Each number occurs as the plot continues to delay resolution. The audience knows the lovers will end together. The lovers don’t know it yet. The misunderstanding gives Astaire and Rogers reasons to dance in escalating emotional contexts. The plot exists to enable the choreography instead of the other way around. Both the film and the audience understood this as the deal the form offered.

Does Top Hat still hold up?

I give Top Hat a 9 because Astaire and Rogers are at their peak and Berlin wrote them a score worthy of their feet. Cheek to Cheek alone would get a high number from me. The mistaken-identity plot is thin enough to cost it a point, and I’d still pick it over almost any musical made since.

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