Dancing Cheek To Cheek,
Oops-Ginger Rogers And Fred Astaire’s “Roberta” (1935)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Sandy Salmon
Roberta, Ginger Rogers,
Fred Astaire, Irene Dunne, music by Jerome Kern, 1935
I can’t dance, can’t
dance a lick. Like a lot of guys, maybe gals too but I will just concentrate on
guys here, I have two left feet. Nevertheless I have always been intrigued by
people who can dance and do it well. Have been fascinated by the likes of James
Brown and Michael Jackson growing up. As a kid though I, unlike most of the
guys around my way, I was weaned on the musicals, the song and dance routines
where the couples kicked out the jams. Top of the list in those efforts were
the dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers whose dancing mesmerized a two
left feet kid just at a time when I was coming of age, coming of school dance
and checking out girls age and once in a while in the privacy of my lonely room
I would try to work out a couple of steps seen by me on the big screen. No
success. Although I had never viewed the Rogers-Astaire film under review back
then I got a distinct rush of déjà vu watching this film, Roberta.
Déjà vu is right since
although I had not viewed the film on one of those dark Saturday afternoon
matinee double-features when they were running a retrospective at the local
theater I already knew what was going to happen. I had seen say Top Hat then and if the truth be known
the formula did not vary that much in the whole series of song and dance films
they did together. It was not about story line although it probably helped the
director to have a working script so he could figure out where to have somebody
burst out in song, or trip over a table and begin an extended dance routine.
That said the “cover”
story here is Fred leading a band of upstart Americans into gay Paree (in the old
fashioned-happy way not as a designation for sexual orientation) expecting to
have a gig which went south on them. Fred meets Ginger working as Polish
countess down on her uppers who is into high fashion which I expect everyone
knows old Paris is famous for. That’s allows those bursts into song and dance
to go forth without too much interference from the story-line. In short do as I
did as a kid and now too just watch Ginger and Fred go through their paces.
That’s worth the price of admission.
That and tunes like Smoke Gets In
Your Eyes via the magical and under-rated composer Jerome Kern
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