Top Hat

Top Hat (1935, dir. Mark Sandrich) is entertaining if you place yourself, as much as possible, within the time and spirit of the film.  It is an entertainment that allows ample opportunity for Fred Astaire to dance on his own and together with Ginger Rogers.  The plot offers light romance, as Astaire’s character Jerry falls in love with Roger’s Dale Tremont on first sight.  Complications ensue when confused identities lead Tremont to believe that Jerry is married and that his wife is encouraging her dalliance with her husband.  This makes for some amusing moments, but also creates a perverse atmosphere when Tremont, knowing what she believes she knows, still falls for Jerry.  There are comic moments of repartee, some of them suggestive, especially several surrounding the honeymoon suite that Jerry and his friend Horace share.  A narcissistic Italian fashion designer (the great Bellini) and a rebellious butler (Eric Blore) get involved.  Especially charming is character actor Edward Everett Horton’s portrayal of Horace, who produces a show in which Jerry appears.  He is nervous, anxious, and wholly inept.  His wife, played by Helen Broderick, also good, holds him in barely hidden contempt. These secondary characters infuse the film with comedy.

The film’s first half works better than the second, which begins to drag, especially the Piccolino sequence.  By modern standards, the dance numbers are entertaining but not astounding.  Even though Astaire’s dancing influenced such later figures as Gene Kelly and Michael Jackson, they outstripped him, and dance styles progressed so that most of the dance scenes in the film seem, well, old hat.  Even so, Astaire had a presence, a way of holding himself, a way of moving, whether he is walking or dancing across the room, that lifts the film.