Top Hat

There are certain films and shows that resonate with audiences everywhere they generate discussion and debate about everything from gender, class, citizenship and race, to consumerism and social identity. This new teachable canon of film and television introduces students to alternative classics that range from silent film to CSI. The most brilliant of all the 1930s Astaire/Rogers musicals, Top Hat s wonderful dance routines, catchy Irving Berlin songs, witty dialogue, and lavish Art Deco sets have ensured its continuing popularity seventy–five years after its first screening in 1935. Peter William Evans s immensely readable volume uses this paradigmatic film to explore the musical genre, notions of romance and subjectivity, and the contested relations between the sexes, all set against the social–political backdrop of 1930s America Written in a clear, accessible style, Top Hat appeals to the student and teacher of the musical and of Hollywood film history, as well as the film–loving general reader

List of Figures vi

Synopsis vii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1. The Making of Top Hat 6

2. Fred Astaire: "Outlaw" Stylist of the Dance 19

3. Ginger Rogers: Confirming and Defying Convention 26

4. Introduction to Narrative and Number: The Bumpy Road to Love 35

5. The Numbers 43

6. Querying National and Sexual Identity 85

Conclusion: A Perfectly Swell Romance 101

Notes 104

Bibliography 106

Index 114

Peter William Evans is a Professor of Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London. His publications range from classical Hollywood (books on the musical, romantic comedy, and the Biblical epic, and articles on film noir, the western, and Hitchcock), to British cinema (a book on Carol Reed) and Spanish cinema (books on Bunuel, Almodovar, and Bigas Luna).

"Its considerable claims to Art and its resonant magic are the dual focus of this insightful and highly readable study by Peter William Evans . . . Evans approaches this most celebratory of musical comedies in celebratory mode but also with a deserved seriousness devoid of solemnity. " (Times Literary Supplement , 24 June 2011)