Top Hat (1935)
Directed by Mark Sandrich

Film Review

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, one of Hollywood's most successful partnerships, were at their peak when they made their fourth film, Top Hat.  This was to be their greatest success and, with box office receipts amounting to three million dollars, it proved to be the most profitable film of the decade for RKO, the studio that made it.  Although Astaire and Rogers would go on to make a further six films together - including the superlative Swing Time (1936) - this would be the high point of their legendary career together, their best known and best loved film. The film was director Mark Sandrich's second collaboration with Astaire and Rogers after The Gay Divorcee (1934). The trio would would work together on Follow the Fleet (1936), and Shall We Dance (1937) and Carefree (1938).

In plot terms, Top Hat is little more than a reworking of The Gay Divorcee, with which it shares the same production team and most of the principal cast.  The most substantial difference between the two films is that here the music is supplied by Irving Berlin and includes some of the composer's best known numbers: Isn't This a Lovely Day, Cheek to Cheek and Top Hat, White Tie and Tails, the latter of which became Astaire's signature song.   The highlight of the film is the spellbinding Cheek to Cheek song and dance routine, arguably the most memorable in the entire Astaire-Rogers repertoire.

A film that was intended to lift the spirits of a nation which had yet to rid itself of the Great Depression, Top Hat stands as one of the most uplifting of the 1930s musicals.  With its effervescent sense of fun, perfectly choreographed song and dance numbers and the Astaire-Rogers duo at their slick and seductive best (to say nothing of the lavish sets which include a wonderfully bizarre Art Deco recreation of Venice), Top Hat is still a great piece of escapist entertainment.

Film Synopsis

American song-and-dance man Jerry Travers arrives in London to perform in a show produced by his friend Horace Hardwick.  Whilst practicing his tap dance routine in his hotel room one evening, Jerry disturbs Dale Tremont, a young woman in the room below his.  As Dale vents her spleen on Jerry, the dancer falls madly in love with her and he ends up chasing her around London, ignoring Horace's warnings that she may be a dangerous woman.  Through a silly misunderstanding, Dale mixes up the identities of Jerry and Horace.  Since the latter is a married man, and in fact the husband of her best friend Madge, Dale feels she has been deceived and resolves never to see Jerry again.  Hearing that the woman of his dreams has gone off to Venice to model some clothes for couturier Alberto Beddini, Jerry hastens after her, accompanied by Horace.  In Venice, Dale can hardly believe Madge's nonchalance when she tells her that her husband has been flirting with another woman.  She concludes that the best solution is for her to reject Jerry, whom she still thinks is Horace (i.e. Madge's husband), and marry Alberto instead...