After working through many of Hollywood’s best known musicals, it’s time we move on to this classic that highlights the dancing ahead of the music. It’s also appropriate that we watch at least one film starring that great dancer of cinema Fred Astaire and he certainly does not disappoint here.

A famous American dancer Jerry Travers arrives in London to perform in a show produced by his friend Horace Hardwick. After a silly little episode in a posh London club, Hardwick hosts Travers in his own hotel room where he can’t help but break out in a dance routine. This disturbs another guest staying downstairs Dale Tremont who comes up to complain. The encounter causes Jerry to fall in love with her and he ends up following her all over the city despite being told that she is in some sort of relationship with Italian fashion designer Alberto Beddini. It just so happens that Dale is friends with Horace’s wife Madge and goes to Venice for the weekend to meet her. Jerry insists on going as well, taking Horace with him. However due to a misunderstanding Dale thinks that Jerry is Horace and that he is therefore cheating on Madge by wooing her.

I didn’t quite realize how old this film is when I watched it, a testament to its timeless quality that enables it to hold up so well. Its age and era however explains a lot of the elements in it such as its casual display of luxury as a form of escapism, understandable given that it was made in the midst of the Great Depression, and Jerry dogged pursuit of Dale as a form of wooing. Today we can see that all of the luxury is incredibly fake and cheap looking while Jerry’s aggressive pursuit would amount to harassment and even kidnapping. Then there’s the thinness of the mistaken identity plot, the silliness of some of its jokes and how Beddini is very obviously gay and not really interested in Dale at all but of course they couldn’t explicitly say that at the time. Allowances do have to be made for such an old film that very much is a product of its time.

For all that however, this is indeed a charming and even magical film. Fred Astaire isn’t a conventionally attractive leading man but once he starts moving, it’s absolutely thrilling. I’ve read before about how Ginger Rogers technically has the more difficult job as she has to do everything he does, except backwards and in high heels, but it’s hard to deny that Astaire simply has more charisma. The humor isn’t great but the way it relies on malapropisms and language that is just slightly off makes it very amusing especially when you’re not sure if it’s deliberate or if it’s because that’s just how people spoke back then. The plot is silly but Gingers’ increasingly incredulous expression as she reacts to Madge’s seeming indifference and Jerry’s audacity is highly amusing.

My wife commented that it’s just a perfectly balanced package and that is true. It’s not great art in that it offers neither deep insights nor break new ground. It’s a purely commercial product made for mass market entertainment. Yet it is so well made that is still worth watching today and now its very age adds to its character.