Top Hat (1935)

Excellent, smart action film.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

TOP HAT ranks high on practically everyone's 'Fred & Ginger' lists (including mine) probably because it's the most representative of their films. The audience gets everything it's expecting: a fabulous musical score from Irving Berlin, brilliant dancing, witty lines delivered by an expert supporting cast, spectacular Art Deco sets that virtually define that architectural and decorative movement, beautiful dresses for Ginger to wear including the most famous of them all, and probably Fred's most famous solo number. You even get the not- so-good that you expect, the basic farcical plot that's spurred on by a silly misunderstanding which goes on forever. Yes, TOP HAT has it all. Yet somehow I never look forward to re-watching it as I do most of the others. That's not to say that TOP HAT's elegance ever fails to delight me once I do begin to see it again. It does, always. But I never have the yearning to put it back in the old DVD player. I wonder why? By my reckoning, TOP HAT qualifies as a remake of THE GAY Divorcée, not quite as funny as the original and with a mistaken identity twist that goes on about three times as long, and seems to go on about 300 times as long, as that original's. On the plus side, and a powerful plus it is, TOP HAT has one more duet for Fred and Ginger than does TGD. As charming as it is to watch the youthful Betty Grable and Edward Everett Horton hoof it about, the gazebo dance is simply overwhelming in its impact (by comparison, check out the parody of this duet done by Eleanor Powell and George Murphy in one of their movies. It's very nice, but emotionally it comes and it goes to no lasting effect). Likewise, the brilliant 'No Strings' number may have given movies their finest 'meet cute' scene ever. If Astaire's tap dancing there doesn't lift your spirits I believe that you're probably dead already whether you realize it or not.The 'Cheek to Cheek' number is legendary, you don't need me going on about it. Our redheaded stepchild seems to be the poor Piccolino. True, its pseudo-Berkeley choral traipsing isn't much, and the song is just a bit of silly fun, but I find the celebratory dance done by Ginger and Fred to be perfect for the occasion. Not emotionally deep, the emotions having already been established, the Piccolino is simply joyous, just the sort of feeling that people ought to have at a wedding.TOP HAT was the peak of the ladder of Fred and Ginger's popularity. They'd gone from hit to big hit to huge hit to this mega hit. Now they would retrace those steps in practically the same order. It was a great climb up, and it's going to be a great climb down as well.

Released in 1935, "Top Hat" is the fourth pairing of Rogers and Astaire. Featuring music by Irving Berlin, the story is a simple case of mistaken identity. Ginger's character tries her hardest to resist the charms of Astaire, but is powerless, though she gives him a run for his money. For his part, he is wild about the girl. Not even marriage can stand in the way.Backed by three great character actors--Helen Broderick, Eric Blore, and Edward Everett Horton--Rogers and Astaire are delightful in this light-hearted comedy that features some laugh out loud moments and, of course, some dramatic dancing.This very successful film also features amazing sets and some fashions that are beautiful to see. All together, this production is fabulously stylish and well worth seeing.

Well, to get an impression of where I stand when I dismiss the musical aspects of this film, Fred and Ginger are, next to William Powell and Myrna Loy, the most watchable, most cinematic on-screen couple of the decade—urbane, witty, effortless. It is not their dancing together that impresses, not for me. Fred has done much better dancing in Easter Parade. The staging is most of the time uninteresting, spotlight on them, dull camera. And they are not what you would call superb actors by the contemporary sense of the term.It is the bubble of spontaneity and feigned amazement, the air of pleasant light friction they manage to sustain between them; a sense of soft clouds gliding against each other, the rain and lightning all for show.As said, the musical aspect doesn't touch me, it seems onedimensional— give me the self-reflexive dance in layers of something like Busby's Footlight Parade. What IS interesting about this, and their cinematic coupling in general, is that it is so much more than a cocktail party, that would be William and Myrna's charm (do see The Thin Man if you haven't). It will seem superficial at first, indeed most viewers have dismissed the story as a trifle rehash of their Gay Divorcée. It was probably seen as harmless at the time. The thing is basically a screwball with a few numbers.It probably excites me and not others, because my ongoing premise is that each film right down to the most crude, can be understood as a consciousness at the mercy of images it creates—the fun all in riding whims of perception as they enter the fray and stitch illusion.Let me unspool a bit of what goes on in the story to illustrate that. You have two lovers who curiously explore each other. We know they are destined, audiences knew then, it's as if they are already together and all this is being reflected back on. The place is Venice, the Hollywood studio version—the perfect scenery for embellishment and dreamlike digress, because it is so falsely idyllic. It really is an amazing set; imagine being a studio carpenter and going to work there every morning, what bliss..Now as fate would have it, there is the misunderstanding (mistaken identity) and all it kicks off. This is mirrored in a friendly couple, where imagined adultery is actually real and comes to the surface. You have the Italian dressmaker and annoying manservant as comic relief, both of whom act roles at one point or other, incidentally both are celibates so without anchor. On a third level, you have both lovers fabricating a supposed shared memory from the past, with Fred's, here's the magic of the couple in full effect, slyly improvised on the spot on top of Ginger's.Fateful changing of selves; splintered, older version of the reality of the characters; and third parallel mirror in obviously fabricated memory about veiled sex, which is at the core of everything. In Fred's story, he supposedly met Ginger years ago in Paris, who was going then by Madeleine—'Mad' in short as he calls her.How can anyone who has intimately known Vertigo see this and not sit back? Can't we say that some things enter the vocabulary with such power they transform in retrospect everything else?Oh, the abstraction is empty as we have it. This is a comedy, so we have too much control of the plot. There are whims in perception, but we are never lost. And all of it has been so deftly annotated since Vertigo and on, that there's nothing to take from it anymore, the next two or three steps have been taken. But there must have been a window, say no more than 10 years, when this really tickled the imagination and opened portals.

It is always a pleasure to watch Fred Astairs at his best.Someone once compared the Martini cocktail as Fred Astair in a glass.. so I fixed myself one to match this movie, the first zips were great but it all turned flat soon afterward.The first scene is very promising as we recognize an energetic Fred Astair in a ¨silence¨ gentlemen room in London, those first 5 minutes were worth the ambiance of a Fred Astair/Martini fansuddenly we're taken to the hotel scene and the first impressive tap dancing and the fantastic 30's sounds flow over, one more zip to my drink is welcome...until we're flashed by this ¨3 stooges¨ plot of mis-identification and hide and seek over different rooms. completely disappointed till the point of putting the rest of the Dry Gin back in the bottle till I get another Fred Astair movie...The sets are ridiculousy repetitive, all handed in same boring-to-eye colour and over crafted Greek style, no matter it was London or Venice, you can tell the same manifacture...the hide and seek in between the misencounters were silly repetitive in the gaps of the few great dancing scenes.Dancing Scene: great techniques and beautiful music arrangements, but would have worked more on separate film cuts for cinema pre-view entertainment, not a movie.Madge and Horace weird relationship is worthless to mention as props as any of the Greek decorations in the flat decorated rooms, almost annoyng.it is sad to acknowledge that this is just a pre-fab plot less long sketch to promote Fred Astaris and Ginger Rogers theatrical talents. not a real movie.