Shall We Dance (1937)

At one time, I would have called musicals my favorite film genre. Alas, it gets harder and harder to find promising ones I haven't seen already. Most musicals from the last few decades are either made with kids in mind or dark in tone with nearly constant singing. The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers era has neither in abundance, but their works can have little good to offer besides dancing. I had no guarantee that I would get anything halfway new out of continuing to watch them.

Here Astaire plays a ballet star with a taste for tap dancing, whose stage name "Petrov" carries a different air from birth name Peter P. Peters. Like in Swing Time, he wants to marry a woman he knows almost nothing about, in this case tap dancer Linda Keene (Rogers), who feels ready to resign and never meet another dancing man. Petrov pulls strings with his unknowing, stodgy manager Jeffrey (Edward Everett Horton) to get on the same cruise as Keene. When an aggressive suitor pursues Petrov, Jeffrey tells her that Petrov has been secretly married for years. Word spreads on the ship...until irresponsible papers all over declare that Petrov and Keene are not only married but expecting, which makes an already awkward courtship even more so.

As Astaire-Rogers plots go, it's pretty thick. Not hard to follow, just comedy-of-errors tangled. It also gets about as daring as the Hays Publication Code would permit, what with a hotelier (the ever peculiar Eric Blore) repeatedly changing his mind on whether to allow Petrov and Keane access to each others' rooms.

Don't get me wrong; it's still more cheesy than funny. Certain not-so-bright gags, while maybe cute at first, are overdone. There's also a scene full of black laborers making music that inspires Petrov -- not a bad depiction for the time, but it's only fair to warn unhardened modern viewers. That said, on no count is SWD as bad an offender as ST, which kind of thrives on unrelatable jackassery. And I never dared turn my eyes away for a minute without pausing.

As always, Astaire and Rogers are the best parts, almost as good at acting as at dancing. I won't say they do their best dancing this time around -- probably not as much of it, for one thing -- but I would be remiss not to credit the rollerskating scene. Reportedly, that took 150 takes, leaving both very bruised. Rogers must have felt better about high heels afterward. An honorable mention goes to the unidentified ballerina near the end who spends much of her stage time literally bending over backwards; that may have been more painful than the leads' bruises.

If one other thing stands out about SWD, it's the music, care of George and Ira Gershwin. For once, I'd heard some of the numbers before watching the musical, namely "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" and "They Can't Take That Away from Me." The latter has never sounded more bittersweet to me.

I want to call SWD average for Astaire and Rogers movies, but I've seen exactly four. I don't put it on quite the same tier as Top Hat or The Gay Divorcee, but it has its advantages, so I don't regret checking it out. Whether I'll give a chance to more of their oeuvre remains to be seen.