Swing Time, the sixth of the Astaire-Rogers partnerships, appears to be the most highly regarded of their films nowadays — or at least equal to Top Hat. The Criterion website even claims it’s the greatest dance movie ever made. I like Swing Time okay, but it’s not my favorite of their films, and I have my reasons.
Many writers feel that it’s the most “mature” of their films — the character psychology is most developed, the dances are integrated with the plot the best, the dances themselves are the most complex and their choreographical relationships to each other the most artful, the songs carry the plot action best. Its director, George Stevens, has much higher status as a director than Mark Sandrich, who directed all of the previous Astaire-Rogers star vehicles except for William Seiter’s Roberta, the most negligible of the lot. Rogers is on the record for preferring the film over the others, and for preferring Stevens over Sandrich, whom she disliked. The set design comes in for special ecstasies — well, not for the whole film, but the spectacular set of the Silver Sandal nightclub. The lame plot is dismissed because obviously no one should care about plot in an Astaire-Rogers movie.
I get it. It’s a fine film with exquisite dances. I believe it’s the first film in which Rogers is totally at ease with the choreography. But regarding Stevens’s direction, I see little difference between his and Sandrich’s in visual technique. To my eyes, Stevens’s comic pacing is much more ponderous. Things seem more ponderous in general. The actors are if anything less relaxed than in most of the previous films — compare Alice Broderick as Madge in Top Hat to her Mabel in Swing Time, or Eric Blore in The Gay Divorcee to his dance-school master in the later film. The one great exception is Ginger Rogers, and that counts for a lot. Stevens’s instincts are for drama — this is the man that later directed Gunga Din, Shane, A Place in the Sun, and Giant. Although he did direct some fine comedies, too, they are mainly comedies of manners and social friction. Lightness of touch was not his forte. So I have the feeling his whole enterprise was over-disciplined, and his comedians were required to restrain themselves. Or maybe they were just tired. We know Stevens was a perfectionist akin to William Wyler, prone to long planning and numerous takes. (This is the film in which a dance number — the finale — was rehearsed forty-something times, leaving Rogers with bloodied feet.) Light comedy doesn’t like to be too disciplined.
And this might be why both Rogers and most critics prefer Swing Time to the other pairings. It’s aesthetically more like a serious “well-made” film drama than the woollier light comedies. Rogers’s acting is encouraged and the audience is encouraged to feel like the film is saying something about a romantic, professional relationship. Stevens was excellent with actors. Take this scene, Rogers with Broderick, and eventually with Astaire. It’s good stuff.
Rogers was always a superb dancer, but she was at a disadvantage — not only because of the high heels and backward steps, but because the choreographies weren’t hers. She had to learn steps, moves, and designs, things that Astaire and Hermes Pan knew inside out because they designed them. She was technically excellent, but she also covered up some of her latecomings by acting her roles in the dances. That’s a good thing. It’s in Swing Time that I feel that the acting and the dancing coincided — she was a dancing persona. (I’m not sure yet whether I feel Astaire is basically always acting the same persona in all his films with Ginger, but I lean that way now.) She’s not being led, she’s not a dancing ingenue. She’s playing a virtuoso dancer. Take the first dance scene, “Pick Yourself Up.” It has a nice comic build-up. Lucky (Astaire) pretends to have two left feet so that he can get Penny (Rogers) to teach him at the dancing school where she’s an instructor. When it looks like Penny is in danger of losing her job, Lucky pretends to show her boss all that she has taught him. The dance is one of the most gleeful they’ve done, but it’s distinctive because Penny’s pleasure comes from recognizing that Lucky is her equal as a dancer. Rogers’s postures are great.
Unlike many — most? — fans of the Astaire-Rogers films, I don’t think of them as romantic in a psychological sense. Their best relationships are that of true friends and working partners. Except for the magical “Night and Day” dance in The Gay Divorcée, their dances aren’t erotic. The romance is in the form and the setting, but these are pretexts for art. And most “aesthetic dances” — from ballroom exhibitions to partner skating — use romantic attachment between partners as an effect. Most of the Astaire-Rogers dances are comic in some way; the romantic numbers are often offset from the plot, like the “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” show in Follow the Fleet. Movie audiences sitting in the dark, in awe of the glamour, probably invested the technically complex displays of partnership with eroticism and romantic sentiment. That may be why Swing Time is such a favorite. This is the film in which there’s an attempt to give the dancing vessels enough depth to make them appear like they are feeling emotions greater than the urge to “become dance.” I just don’t roll that way, especially knowing what I do about the Astaire-Rogers relationship. “Becoming dance” is more important to me than an erotic dyad.
So I prefer the more raggedy, rougher films. They keep a good distance, so their comic spirit is stronger. Their casts are more cheerful. And — it’s time to say it — they swing more. For a movie called Swing Time, there’s precious little swing spirit in it. In my humble opinion.
I haven’t said anything about the “Bojangles in Harlem” number that many consider one of Astaire’s great stage solos. I acknowledge its greatness. There’s just two things I can’t get past. First, blackface. I just can’t accept it now. Maybe later. Second, this ostensible tribute to Bill “Bojangles” Robinson has nothing in common with Robinson’s style. It’s maybe a fine imitation of pre-Robinson minstrel routines. It’s said that what we see on the screen is only a fraction of a planned but scrapped larger dance-epic devoted to Robinson’s career — so I imagine the routine is meant to evoke the first days of the vaudeville and Follies minstrel routines. Okay. But still. Robinson, for what it’s worth, was not a great fan of Astaire’s. He called him an “eccentric dancer.” Robinson was a formalist and a traditionalist. In his eyes, Astaire created pastiches of disparate styles.
I won’t be embedding blackface performances on this site, except for one. It’s a strange one, maybe. It’s Eleanor Powell’s tribute to Robinson in Honolulu (1939). I don’t usually care for Eleanor Powell’s dancing, but once again, this is an exception. I feel this is a genuine tribute to Robinson, emulating his actual style. There’s irony here. Powell may have been cutting Astaire, her main rival as a dancing movie star. Maybe not. But she is certainly consciously emulating Robinson’s style, as she also certainly knew Astaire was not. It’s said that Robinson befriended Powell on the Follies circuit they traveled together and taught her his famed stair dance. If that’s true, then this performance is an example of a disciple’s homage. I can’t recall any other examples of Powell invoking Robinson’s restrained, contained, elegant style.
