Top Hat (1935) is one of the great dance musicals, and possibly the best Astaire and Rogers musical ever, with wonderful, magical dance and song numbers. The film's legendary dances, with their charm and sophistication naturally help to develop and carry out the simple plot - the romantic story of two strangers who meet by accident, confused by a contrived subplot of mistaken identities. In fact, romantic dance numbers help Astaire win Rogers over to him - (first with "Isn't It a Lovely Day" and later with "Cheek to Cheek").This film was the fourth of nine films that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers appeared in for RKO (between 1933 and 1939). The musical score by Irving Berlin, his first complete musical score in five years, was the start of a long collaboration between Berlin and Astaire. Filmed during the Depression Era, the film's idea of wealth and elegance is portrayed by the sumptuous backgrounds and surroundings (fancy hotels, Art Deco Venice, etc.) and extravagant costumes of the characters (evening gowns and furs, tuxedos).
The titles and credits begin with an opening sequence depicting a shiny stage floor and the dancing feet of two dancers, shown from the waist down. First Fred Astaire, then Ginger Rogers. After they swirl toward the camera, the picture then dissolves to a shot of a black top hat, over which the remaining credits are superimposed. The top hat belongs to a dignified man who enters a stuffy, but stately London Club - the Thackeray Club (founded 1864), where silence is to be strictly observed. The atmosphere is so quiet and still that the slightest cough and accidental crackling of another gentleman's newspaper disturbs the elderly club members. The rustling newspaper belongs to Jerry Travers (Fred Astaire), a celebrated Broadway dancer making his London debut. He is waiting to be picked up by the producer of the London dance revue, Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton).
When Hardwick, the show-business impresario departs from the club with Travers, the dancer again upsets the club's hushed atmosphere and awakens club members by loudly tap dancing his exit from the club. In Hardwick's hotel suite later that evening, Hardwick tells Jerry that his wife Madge (Helen Broderick) expects Jerry to fly down with Horace over the weekend to the Lido (a seaside resort near Venice, Italy), where she is vacationing. Madge plans to have Jerry meet, for match-making purposes, a "young friend" and "there's something in the air." Hardwick suggests that Jerry should consider marrying and settling down:
Horace: Look here young fella, I think it's about time you found out for yourself.
Jerry: ...No thanks Horace. In me, you see a youth who is completely on the loose. No yens. No yearnings. No strings. No connections. No ties to my affections.Happy-go-lucky Jerry breaks into song, mid-sentence, singing confidently in "No Strings (I'm Fancy Free)" (sung twice for Horace) that he prefers his present state of footloose independence, his stringless connections/affections. He exuberantly and noisily practices his tap dancing and jumping, performing airborne heel-kicks, and ultimately slapping and kicking the walls and furniture with both hands and feet.
The camera cranes downward to the hotel room below, where Jerry wakes up Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers). After phone calls to the hotel management, who reports the complaint by phone to Horace in the room, Travers continues to dance around, toppling a marble statue from its pedestal. The awakened sleeper from the floor below, where plaster is falling from the ceiling, comes to his door to complain. Jerry meets her as she glares and complains to him. He instantly decides she is the girl for him, apologizing for disturbing her with his dancing "affliction" which strikes him at odd moments:
Jerry: I didn't realize I was disturbing you. You see, every once in a while, I...I suddenly find myself dancing.
Dale: Oh, I suppose it's some kind of an affliction.
Jerry: Yes, yes, it's an affliction. So mine is dance.
Dale: And it only occurs at this time of night?
Jerry: Yes, that's it. It only occurs at this time of night. As a matter of fact, I really shouldn't be left alone.
Dale: Yes, I can see that. You probably should have a couple of guards.As she returns to her room, smiling to herself, Jerry has another dance "attack" coming on in the hallway, hinting that only one thing can stop him - the embracing arms of an attendant nurse.
Jerry describes the complaint he has just seen to Horace: "She's lovely, she's delightful, she's charming, and she wants to sleep." He softens the noise of his dancing by appointing himself "official sand man" and sprinkling sand from the hallway cuspidor on the hotel suite's floor. To lull her to sleep, he proceeds to gently perform a dance on the fine sand and pat the floor - a sand dance - while she snuggles back to sleep in her bed below. The sand dance is quite effective - Dale and Horton both fall asleep. Jerry winds up yawning and collapsing into a chair himself.
The next day, courting Dale Tremont, he purchases most of the flowers in the hotel flower shop and sends them to her - with a card reading: "From your silent admirer." He asks that they be charged to Horace Hardwick, Room 404. After Jerry leaves, the flower salesman wonders about how Miss Tremont's Latin dress designer Alberto Beddini (Erik Rhodes) will react: "I wonder what Mr. Beddini is going to say about this...The desk clerk has intimated that Mr. Beddini provides Miss Tremont with all the niceties. Including her clothes...And her niceties are very nice."
When Jerry finds Dale dressed in riding clothes in the hotel lobby, he offers to take her to the Belcher Riding Academy stables, but she declines. He surreptitiously takes the place of the hansom cab driver in the cab waiting outside. She discovers that he is the driver when he cannot control his irrepressible, tapping feet in the driver's seat (keeping rhythm with the sound of the horse's hoofs on the street), heard through the roof of the cab. Dale spots him through the cab's trap door. Jerry provides her with a thought about the similarity between his uncontrollable horse and other girls: "In dealing with a girl or horse, one just lets nature take its course." Only slightly amused by his behavior and his "strange power over horses" when they arrive at the academy, she tips him with a coin, suggesting: "Buy yourself a new hat."
While she rides in the park, a thunderstorm breaks out and she takes shelter in a covered, deserted band shell. Ardent and hopeful, Jerry drives up in the cab, offering to rescue her, but she again antagonistically and coldly refuses his assistance: "No thank you. I prefer being in distress." A sudden thunderburst startles her, sending her into his arms. She is surprised and faintly annoyed at herself and backs off - he fancifully and scientifically explains to her what thunderstorms are all about to reassure her, describing a thunderstorm as a meteorological kiss:
When a clumsy cloud from here meets a fluffy little cloud from there, he billows towards her. She scurries away, and he scuds right up to her. She cries a little, and there you have your shower. He comforts her. They spark. That's the lightning. They kiss. Thunder!First, he sings "Isn't This a Lovely Day?" to break down her haughty defenses and change her mood. Although she listens attentively, her back is turned to him through most of the song.
The weather is frightening,
The thunder and lightning
Seem to be having their way,
But as far as I'm concerned,
It's a lovely day.
The turn in the weather
Will keep us together
So I can honestly say
That as far as I'm concerned,
It's a lovely day and everything's OK.
Isn't this a lovely day to be caught in the rain?
You were going on your way
Now you've got to remain
Just as you were going
Leaving me all at sea
The clouds broke
They broke, and oh what a break for me
I can see the sun up high
Though we're caught in a storm
I can see where you and I could be cozy and warm
Let the rain pitter patter
But it really doesn't matter
If the skies are grey.
Long as I can be with you,
It's a lovely day.Then, after the song ends, he walks slowly away toward the middle of the bandstand gazebo, strolling and casually whistling. At the start of a two and a half minute flirtatious dance number in which he cleverly challenges her to join him, she also whistles, stands and then pursues him, imitating his steps and dance gestures exactly. They perform a wonderful dance together to express the progression of their emotional involvement (from acquaintance through courtship and romance), beginning first with her mimicking his steps. He challenges her with a dance step which she accepts and then repeats. Soon, she adds an original variation of her own to top him and presents it to him, to his delight and surprise. As the dance progresses, they are cooperating fully with each other, dancing in unison, side by side. Facing toward each other, they almost touch and fall into each other's arms, but refrain from doing so.
The tempo of the music accelerates, as they mirror each other's steps while facing each other, performing swinging motions with their arms. Frolicking and tap-spinning together, again side by side, they become more and more playful with each other, not just imitating each other but performing for each other. A loud, crackling thunderclap causes them to freeze and look at each other. Then the music and the tempo of their dancing accelerates again, as they make backward dragging steps while facing each other. They take a leap while turning, and finish the turn with a tap dance barrage, in unison. And then for the first time, she opens her arms and invites him to touch and take her in an exuberant embrace - they spin and whirl joyously around the stage floor together.
After a series of stops and starts, performed in unison, they cooperate and imitate each other - he throws her and then she throws him. At the end of their marvelous dance sequence, they dance off the front of the bandstand, realizing that it's raining, sit back cross-legged and perch on the edge of the bandstand, smiling and shaking hands in the final fadeout.
Back at the hotel, Dale must explain to Alberto Beddini, her pompous Italian dress designer, who is sending her the roomful of flowers. She exclaims happily that she knows her admirer, but knows him only as "Adam": "I've seen him, I've talked to him. I've danced with him." He reminds her that she has promised to go with him to Italy to meet her friend Madge Hardwick and model his clothes, but she refuses: "Alberto, up to the present, our relationship has been purely a business one. But if you start interfering in my personal affairs, I'll go back to America and live on the dole."
Dale receives a telegram from Madge in Venice, suggesting that she look up her husband, Horace Hardwick (Jerry's boss), staying at Dale's hotel in London:
Beddini (reading): 'Come ahead stop stop being a sap stop you can even bring Alberto stop my husband is stopping at your hotel stop when do you start stop.' I cannot understand who wrote this.
Dale: Sounds like Gertrude Stein.At the hotel desk that evening, Dale inquires about Horace Hardwick, Madge's husband, learning that he has Room 404, the room above hers. The clerk points him out as Hardwick, with a briefcase and cane, crosses the hotel's mezzanine. By the time Dale gets closer, Jerry has taken Horace's briefcase and cane and Horace has departed, so she naturally mistakes him for Horace.
Naturally, she is furious - she believes her admirer is Horace, the philandering husband of her best friend Madge Hardwick. When Jerry greets Dale in the lobby, their encounter creates a slight scene in front of the elevator:
Jerry: Cab miss?
Dale (sarcastically): When a clumsy cloud meets a fluffy little cloud.Dale slaps him, and understandably rebuffs any further romantic advances and interests from him, believing he is a married man. He is completely astonished by the rapid turnabout and doesn't understand what has happened to cause it.
Horace is worried that the widely-publicized slap will affect the show: "One breath of scandal will ruin the show." Dale is also infuriated by what she mistakenly perceives to be scandalous: "I hate men. I hate you [to Beddini]. I hate all men...How could he have made love to me when he was married all the time? And to Madge of all people." She is also uncomfortable at the idea of traveling to Italy to the Lido where Madge is, accompanying Beddini to model clothes. But then she decides to go to Venice anyway to tell Madge what has occurred: "Maybe she ought to know." Meanwhile, Horace is concerned that scandal will break over the incident involving Jerry and the girl. He assigns his valet, dimwitted Bates (Eric Blore) to trail Dale Tremont.wherever she goes. Dale ends up fleeing the hotel with her dress designer to romantic Venice, trailed by Bates. Jerry finds that Dale has left town, discovered when he speaks to the hotel maids putting the flowers into the rubbish in her vacated room.
In his dressing room following the first act of Horace's London show, Jerry is disconsolate: "Women do strange things sometimes, don't they?..." A telegram that was sent to Horace from Madge in Italy reveals Dale's destination and whereabouts, and ironically reveals that Madge had invited both Dale and Jerry to Italy to introduce them to each other. Horace paraphrases the telegram's contents to Jerry:
All kinds of good wishes for our success. Sorry that we can't fly down to Italy after the performance to meet her new friend. Says her little friend is in London, staying at my hotel. Her name is Tremont.Overjoyed, Jerry ecstatically demands that Horace charter a plane to take them to Venice for the weekend so that he can follow Dale's flight.
Jerry sprints toward the stage and performs the second act of the London show - the quintessential tuxedo-clad dance and title song "Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails." This routine is the centerpiece of the film's dance numbers, a solo performance and famous Astaire classic, backed by a top-hatted, tuxedoed, male chorus. Jerry rushes on stage, still carrying the telegram in his hand.
The stylish backdrop for the number is suggestive of a Parisian street with the Eiffel Tower in the background. The chorus struts and lunges back and forth, and then separates in two for Jerry, who makes his way forward to the front of the stage. The chorus closes behind him as he begins the title song by reading the telegram invitation to a formal party, pretending it is a prop for his number:
I've just got an invitation through the mail.
Your presence requested this evening is formal
Top hat, white tie, and tails.He acts out dressing for the formal affair, putting on his top hat, straightening his white tie, and brushing off his tuxedo tails, as the chorus behind him stands at a slight angle watching him:
Oh I'm puttin' on my top hat
Tyin' up my white tie
Brushin' off my tails...
I'm steppin' out, my dear
To breathe an atmosphere
That simply reeks with class
And I trust
That you'll excuse my dust
When I step on the gasJerry and the chorus pace to one side, and then to the other. When they pause behind him, he lets go a tap dance barrage, whirls, and then waits for the chorus to repeat the movement. Then, the chorus disappears from the stage in three directions (to the rear and two sides), leaving him to solo tap dance with his tapping cane, circling around it, and using it in creative gestures and moves. The music slows and stops, and the lights are lowered. Suddenly, he becomes a lonely man threatened by his strange and darkened, shadowy environment. He expresses many different emotions and feelings, snapping from one to another: friendliness, wariness, startled surprise, crouching to express readiness in the presence of menace, confidence.
On the horizon behind him, the chorus reappears. Methodically, he uses his cane as a weapon - a gun - and his taps represent gun blasts. He mimes shooting at them - first singly, then in groups of two's and three's, then in machine gun bursts of fire. He also fires in various poses - from the front, from behind his neck, while turning, and over his shoulder. The final dancer/target dodges his bullets, so he resorts to using his cane as an invisible bow and arrow to finish it off. The tap dance ends on one final barrage of twirling taps, a quick lunge at the audience, and a closing curtain.
The clever transition dissolves from this scene to the next with the orchestra's reprise of the title song. The Lido in Venice is gleaming and shimmering, a glowing white set of Art Deco structures, white gondolas, islands, arched bridges and winding canals. There, Dale tells Madge about the flirtatious attentions of the man she presumes is Madge's husband. Madge assures Dale that "Horace's" attentions to her mean nothing - "Horace flirts with every attractive girl he meets. It doesn't mean anything." Of course, a calmly amused Madge doesn't realize that Dale is speaking about Jerry.
When Jerry sees Madge upon arrival in Venice, she asks: "How did Dale strike you?" He replies, tongue in cheek: "Right between the eyes." With Madge's approval, Dale decides to frighten "Horace" (Jerry) into marital responsibility: "I'll make him remember me in a manner he'll never forget."
Dale: Madge, have you any objections if I scare your husband so that he'll never look at another woman?
Madge: Dale, no husband is ever too scared to look.Dale goes to Horace's/Jerry's shared room and kisses him, inventing a story about their past affair a year earlier in Paris. Jerry has no idea what she is talking about, but plays along with a bewildered look on his face. When Dale reports back to Madge on her conversation, Madge wonders about her husband: "I wonder if you've seen something in Horace that I've never seen."
Meeting for dinner, Jerry is once again face to face with Dale. Matchmaker Madge encourages them to dance together. The theme of mistaken-identities is played to the fullest:
Madge: You've robbed me of the pleasure of introducing you two. You've already met.
Jerry: Oh yes we've met. Last spring.
Madge: Well I hope you see a lot of each other. (She winks at Dale).
Jerry: You know, Madge is a most understanding person. She seems to know instinctively the kind of girl that interests me. I don't know what I'd do without her.
Madge (mischeviously): Aw, that's sweet of you darling. But you two run along and dance and don't give me another thought.
Dale: That's what I'm afraid of. (While dancing) I think Madge is a very brave person.
Jerry: Yes, I have a tremendous admiration for her.
Dale (amazed and confused): Well, if Madge doesn't care, I certainly don't.
Jerry: Neither do I. All I know is that it's Heaven, I'm in Heaven.Jerry breaks into song mid-sentence, and their dance together is probably their most memorable dance of all time - and probably their most famous romantic duet as well - "Cheek to Cheek":
Heaven, I'm in Heaven.
And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak.
And I seem to find the happiness I seek.
When we're out together dancing, Cheek to Cheek...First, they dance in the company of others on a crowded dance floor and then dance/drift across a bridge to a deserted, circular ballroom area and all alone in a dreamlike setting perform a romantic dance together. Dale's gown, (the most famous of all Rogers' dance dresses), ice-blue satin covered with ostrich feathers, sheds as they whirl around. Beautifully, they stretch out an arm to each other (his left, her right), leading to her twirling spin into him. Briefly, they repeat their earlier tap-dancing routine from the bandstand, performing side by side. Several times she bends deeply backwards in his arms during their choreographed dance, surrending to his seductive, luring attraction. Mixed with standard ballroom dance positions, they also leap and turn boldly, separate, spin, and then return "cheek to cheek." After a climactic ending with a full orchestral burst, the dance ends as they come to rest against a wall. They affectionately gaze at each other, while Jerry slowly twidles his thumbs:
Obviously in love but remembering who she is dancing with, Dale is perplexed because she has fallen in love with a man she believes is the husband of her best friend. There appears to be no possibility for their relationship to work out and her common sense reasserts itself. On a balcony, Jerry proposes to her, causing her to express her frustration:
Dale: I'm afraid I haven't been quite fair with you. You see, I know who you are.
Jerry: What difference does that make?
Dale: Oh, so that doesn't make any difference?
Jerry: No. Why should it? I don't know who you are. And I don't care.
Dale: Well, that's big of you. Well...
Jerry: Well what?
Dale: Aren't you now supposed to say, 'We should think only of what we mean to each other. That we're entitled to live our own lives.'
Jerry: I don't think I'd say it that way exactly. Well, aren't we?
Dale: Go on.
Jerry: If it weren't for a promise I made in a moment of weakness, I would go on.
Dale: Oh, you made a promise. Well, that shouldn't make much difference to you.
Jerry: That's right. Forget it. Marry me.
Dale: How could I have fallen in love with anyone as low as you?She slaps him again, stomps off, and he interprets her reaction toward him: "She loves me."
Under the circumstances, Dale believes she must leave. But Madge advises her: "Here or there. As long as you remain a spinster, you're fair game for any philandering male. You know, uh, what you should really have is a husband you can call your own. Seriously, I mean it."
But then, there is another way out from her dilemma. "All mixed up," she impulsively decides to marry her dress designer Alberto Beddini, after he proposes, suggesting: "Why not? I'm rich and I'm pretty, and then Mr. Hardwick will leave you alone." Eavesdropping Bates hears their plan and follows them.
Soon, Jerry finds out that Dale has married Beddini, and that Dale has been "mistaking me for Horace all this time." He decides to break up her marriage before it is truly consummated:
All is fair in love and war, and this is revolution!When the newly-married couple move into Horace's/Jerry's bridal suite and Jerry and Horace are told they must vacate, Jerry insists that the room is his, producing his room key to prove it. Beddini angrily threatens if Jerry returns: "If he returns, I will keel heem." He also proclaims a motto, brandishing a fencing foil:
For thee woman thee keess
For thee man, thee sword.Then, Jerry tap dances in the room above the bridal suite to disturb Beddini. When Beddini leaves the suite to challenge Jerry, Jerry sneaks down to find Dale alone in the bridal suite and persuades her to take a gondola ride with him, so that he can explain to her the complicated mess of mistaken identities and bring reconciliation. Dale is contrite, but upset because she believes she is now locked in a marriage to Beddini. When Bates reports that Jerry has kidnapped Dale, and they are drifting out to sea in a gondola, Horace, Madge, and Beddini pursue them in a motorboat, but while giving chase, they run out of petrol (deliberately removed by Bates so that they will be stranded.)
At the hotel that evening, Jerry and Dale share a champagne dinner together, with Jerry taking the place of Dale's groom:
Dale: I still feel a little guilty being here with you while Alberto's out looking for us.
Jerry: Come on. Let's eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, we have to face them.They watch a brief parade of white gondolas on the water while dining. The gondolas are followed by a troupe of dancing chorus singers, performing "The Piccolino." The production number is composed of staged ballroom routines, sometimes top-photographed to provide patterned images reminiscent of Busby Berkeley films. The camera returns to their table, where Dale sings the song's lyrics to Jerry. Part of "The Piccolino" dance uses the waist-sashes of the dancers as props. Photographed at first from the waist down, Dale and Jerry bound down the steps, and skip to the dance floor, becoming the centerpiece of a two-minute dance, filmed in one take. Following their dance, they move sideways back to their table, drop into their chairs, raise their champagne glasses and clink them together in a silent toast to each other.
The conclusion of the film, a final confrontation in the bridal suite, untangles the complications of the plot. It is revealed that Beddini and Dale have had an illegal marriage - they were married by Horace's disguised "invaluable manservant" Bates who posed as a clergyman. Jerry asks Beddini a pointed question in the final dialogue of the film:
Well, well, well, Mr. Beddini, what are you doing in this young lady's room?Jerry and Dale finally have their own chance at romance. The couple, dressed for going out on the town, conclude the film by stepping down from a footbridge and performing a duet, a short reprise of "The Piccolino." Then, they whirl away to the right of the frame into the distance as the film fades to black.