Then the cliffhanger: She whirls out the door, leaving him, and us, bereft - and dying to see how the movie ends. He spins her around dizzily, her dress whipping like a flag at sea. Through a precise mirroring of movements, Rogers shows Astaire the kind of intimate soul mate he’ll lose if he doesn’t ’fess up about his feelings. They begin by simply walking together their mood is blue, but the sexual tension is red hot.
To pick the pinnacle among their 10 films isn’t easy, but my choice is their final waltz in “Swing Time.” Why? Because we’ll think of Astaire and Rogers forever as a unit, falling in love on the dance floor, and this dance expresses something profound about their bond. What Astaire and Rogers communicate through dance deepens the story. Their dances are artistic, emotional and inventive the music is superb (Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin) the costuming and set design create a stylistic whole. There are no greater dance musicals than the ones Fred and Ginger made together, because they accomplished so much, so beautifully. Does the dancing carry me away, give me chills, distill some truth about the human experience? Whether it’s a masterpiece of steps and skill, or an intentionally funny, hot mess, or a dreamscape that’s intriguingly weird - dancing that moves you is great dancing. But, in the final analysis, transcendence won out. I value authentic expression more than dance doubles and tricky editing. In making my choices for the best dance scenes, I looked at several factors: mastery of technique, imaginative choreography, quality of the music - this is very important - and design and storytelling. Taking stock of film’s dance treasury to pick the paragons was an irresistible challenge. It’s still going on: Witness the mainstream success of “La La Land,” a film in the golden age mold. With the rise of movie musicals in the early part of the 20th century, dancing moved easily from stage to screen, becoming bigger, more potent, ever more spectacular - and a lasting love affair with the moviegoing public was born. When lovers need to move beyond conversation, when conflicts boil past negotiation, when joy can’t be expressed in any other way than by leaping into the air on a trumpeter’s high note. What do dance scenes add to a movie? Unspeakable bliss, for starters.
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