A fine romance
Mark Bonham Carter
ASTAIRE DANCING: THE MUSICAL FILMS by John Mueller Hamish Hamilton, £25 The great merit of this splendid volume is that it makes you want to see the Astaire-Rogers films yet again and having read it one would enjoy them more, more, more than ever before. The only rival to John Mueller's book is Arlene Croce's The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book first published in New York in 1972 and never, as far as I know, published in this country. Croce is a more perceptive critic, Mueller, who is a Professor of Political Science and Film Studies, more comprehensive. He covers all Astaire's musical films whereas Croce concentrates on the Astaire-Rogers partnership which both authors rightly regard as the heart of the matter.
The Astaire musicals were a major event in the development of the film musical and more generally in the history of dance. That Astaire is one of the great male dancers of the 20th century is now general- ly recognised. When Jerome Robbins was in the USSR a Soviet journalist asked him which dancers had influenced him most. His answer was Fred Astaire and when Robbins asked the journalist why he looked so surprised, he replied, 'Well Mr Balanchine has just said the same thing.' Not only Mr Balanchine, but Fonteyn, Nureyev and Baryshnikov have all paid tribute to Astaire's genius.
Nor was he simply a great dancer. He was also a great choreographer, a singer who excited the unqualified admiration of Irving Berlin and the man who trans- formed the way in which dance was pre- sented on film. Croce describes him as technically 'the greatest revolutionary in the history of the movie musical'. He insisted on higher standards in camera work, cutting, synchronisation and scoring. He virtually abolished those intrusive reac- tion shots that would be cut into a dance and interrupt its development. He forced an exact and precise synchronisation of picture and sound.
If Top Hat is the most famous and popular of Astaire's films, Swing Time is the best show-case for his choreographic talents. The wonderful score by Jerome Kern includes 'The Way You Look Tonight' and 'A Fine Romance', two of the most memorable, romantic and character- istic Astaire-Rogers songs, and in addition `Swing Time' was perhaps the finest piece of pure dance music written for the incom- parable pair. To this Astaire responded by creating a dazzling dance with no story to tell, 'pure vision and sound', grand and impassioned, intricate and difficult, but never cluttered.
And so to Rogers, whose contribution to the Astaire opus was essential. Without her Astaire had splendid music and famous partners — Rita Hayworth, Cyd Charisse, Leslie Caron, Audrey Hepburn — but there was never a convincing romance nor the sheer pleasure of dancing which the partnership with Rogers uniquely con- veyed. It is not enough to say with Kathar- ine Hepburn, `Fle gives her class, she gives him sex.' Together they produced a che- mistry that was romantic, funny and, as partners, magically beautiful. Theirs was classical dance. Before them there had been plots illustrated by dances; they produced dances which illustrated and revealed the plot. Rogers's performance was unaffected, strict, and quite undated. Though the eye is constantly drawn to the beauty of her body, the long waist, the beautiful hands and feet and in particular the strong and pliant back which Astaire exploits again and again — see for example the pictures of 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' — it was also an expressive body and unpretentious face, one that could tell a story without words.
Astaire emerges as a charming genius. His prime quality, as with so many great dancers, was not so much his technical virtuosity as his consummate musicality and touching perfectionism. It was Joan Fontaine who said of him that he was about the only leading man in Hollywood whose `first concern was the film, not himself and it was to Alan Jay Lerner that he said `. . . why doesn't someone tell me I can't dance?' He could of course dance sup- remely, but in addition, as a choreographer like Ashton and Balanchine, he extended the vocabulary of dance. We have just witnessed in London a display of extraor- dinary dance virtuosity by the great Rus- sian Bolshoi Ballet. There was nothing those dancers could not do. But their vocabulary was monoglot. Repeatedly two or three steps were pounded across the stage by these great dancers whose choreographer was unable to fill in the music and who, committed to ludicrous plots, confined himself to a dance vocabul- ary that prevented him from making the most of the magnificent material at his disposal.
Compare and contrast Fred Astaire. Musical, inventive and professional to the finger-tips of his rather large hands he transformed a Hollywood formula into an art. A dance, he said, should 'build up to a climax and stop!' This is true both of the construction and the performance of a dance. Great dancers when they cease to move are ostentatiously motionless. Look at the Fred Astaire films and his ability to conclude a dance at the climax of a phrase with a final, total stillness, a full stop. Astaire Dancing is a worthy and essential record of one of the great dancers and choreographers of this century. There are no proper records of Nijinsky, Pavlova or Karsavina, nor of Nureyev at his best. Thanks to film, we can see Astaire and Rogers in their wonderful prime.
Mark Bonham Carter is chairman of the Royal Ballet. The following Astaire! Rogers musicals are available on cassette: Top Hat, Swing Time, Shall We Dance? (Channel 5, f7.99).
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