Actors - Swing Time

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	Actors - Swing Time

This article is about the film. For the musical term see swing time.

Swing Time (RKO) is a 1936 Hollywood musical comedy film set mainly in New York and stars Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Helen Broderick, Victor Moore, Eric Blore and Georges Metaxa, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Dorothy Fields. The film was directed by George Stevens.

Swing Time is considered by Croce, Mueller and others to be Astaire's best dance musical, and few if any of his other films include four dance routines that are regarded as masterpieces of their kind. "Never Gonna Dance" is often singled out as his and collaborator Hermes Pan's most profound achievement in filmed dance, while "The Way You Look Tonight" won the Academy Award for Best Song and went on to become his most successful hit record, scoring first place in the U.S. charts in 1936. Kern's score, the second of three he composed specially for Astaire, contains three of his most memorable songs. In an inaccurate and perhaps patronizing verdict, George Gershwin wrote: "Although I don't think Kern has written any outstanding song hits, I think he did a very credible job with the music".

But while it is one of Astaire and Rogers' best movies, the film suffers from a weak plot and unimpressive performances from Metaxa and comic relief Moore. On the plus side is a particularly fine acting and dancing performance from Ginger Rogers who, it is believed, had an affair with director Stevens during the making of the film. Swing Time also marked the beginning of a decline in popularity of the Astaire-Rogers partnership among the general public, with box office receipts falling faster than usual, after a successful opening. The partnership never again quite regained the creative heights scaled in this and previous films.

Swing Time was one of Entertainment Weekly's top 100 films in 1999, and in 2004 it was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

Key songs/dance routines:

Astaire introduces two new elements into his approach to filmed song and dance, both of which represent the abandonment of theatrical staging conventions. First is the use of space, horizontally in "A Fine Romance" and vertically in "Never Gonna Dance", and second is the introduction of trick photography in "Bojangles of Harlem". Partnered hopping steps/spins and the satire of self-conscious elegance feature prominently in the choreography, in which Astaire was assisted by Hermes Pan.

"Pick Yourself Up": The first of Kern's standards is a charming polka first sung and then danced to by Astaire and Rogers. One of their most joyous and exuberant numbers is also a technical tour-de-force with the basic polka embellished by syncopated rythms and overlayed with tap decoration. In particular, Rogers recaptures the spontaneity and committment that she first displayed in the "I'll Be Hard To Handle" number from Roberta
(1935).

"The Way You Look Tonight": Kern's classic Oscar-winning foxtrot is sung by Astaire, seated at a piano, while Ginger is busy washing her hair in a side room. Here, Astaire conveys a sunny yet nostalgic romanticism but later, when the music is danced to as part of "Never Gonna Dance", the pair will create a mood of sombre poignancy. As evidence of its enduring appeal, this song is regularly featured in modern cinema and television, with a prominent recent appearance as the key linking element in the final episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

"Waltz In Swing Time": Described by one critic as "the finest piece of pure dance music ever written for Astaire", this is the most virtuosic partnered romantic duet Astaire ever committed to film. Kern - always reluctant to compose in the Swing style - provided some themes to Robert Russell Bennett who, with the assistance of Astaire's rehearsal pianist Hal Borne, produced the final score. The dance is a nostalgic celebration of love, in the form of a syncopated waltz with tap overlays - a concept Astaire later reworked in the similarly impressive "Belle of New York" segment of the "Currier and Ives" routine from The Belle of New York
(1952). In the midst of this most complex of routines, Astaire and Rogers find time to gently poke fun at notions of elegance, in a delicate reminder of a similar episode in "Pick Yourself Up".

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Swing Time ]

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