Swing Time (1936)

Terry's Grade: B+

Fred Astaire plays John "Lucky" Garnett, a dancer and a gambler who's about to give up performing to marry his sweetheart. But after he misses his own wedding, he sets off for New York in order to make his fortune and come back and re-claim his fiancé. He is accompanied by his faithful companion "Pop" (Victor Moore), who performed card tricks in Lucky's old stage show. In New York, Lucky starts performing with a dance instructor named Penny (Ginger Rogers); the two eventually, inevitably, fall in love. Also along for the ride is Mabel (Helen Broderick), the former receptionist at Penny's old dance school, who ends up as Pop's companion after recognizing the usefulness of their gambling skills.

Fred Astaire is a very famous name, but when I think about it, I don't really know if I've seen him in (m)any other movies. Ditto for Ginger Rogers. Looking at his IMDB page, I've probably seen his spots in The Towering Inferno and on Battlestar Gallactica (I'm pretty sure I've seen all the episodes of that show but that was a long, long time ago). Astaire and Rogers made nine films together, apparently, and I have to assume that this is considered the best of them all. When or if I'll ever see another one is uncertain, but I can't say I'm opposed to the idea.

In the latter half of the movie, there's comes a romantic scene with Astaire and Rogers that should leave the audience kind of giddy, but that emotional high gets killed immediately when Lucky starts applying his makeup for an impending blackface song-and-dance routine. I suppose that a modern audience should be able to contextualize a scene like this and not be offended by it, but it still kind of spoils the mood, and reminds us of the truism that it's impossible for an audience separated by the better part of a century to appreciate a work of art in the same way it was appreciated by a contemporary audience. I always try to bring an open mind when watching older movies, but that's not always enough. To make things even more awkward, we have to watch blackface-Astaire through several scenes following the song before his character has a chance to clean up. Also, the one actual black character in the movie is pure stereotype, but fortunately is only on scene for a few seconds.

There are some classic songs I didn't realize were in this movie: A Fine Romance is the highlight, but the first song we get to enjoy is Pick Yourself Up ("You pick yourself up // dust yourself off // and start all over again"), another standard. I've never considered myself a huge fan of musicals, but when the songs and performers are solid like this, they can be pretty enjoyable.

In the end, there isn't much to say for this movie. It's got good songs, good dancing, and good singing, and some of the jokes still manage to be funny 75 years later. Plot-wise, there are no surprises, but that's not really why you watch a movie like this. If you're me, you watch this movie because it's on a list of movies somewhere that people say you ought to see. And if you're me, you don't feel like you wasted your time on this one.