The swing era of rhythmic jazz played by the big bands was in full swing by the mid-1930s. But the creative forces behind the film Swing Time must not have received the memo. That’s because this George Stevens-directed musical comedy, released in late summer 1936, eschews that increasingly popular musical style of the era and instead emphasizes a Great American Songbook score composed by the legendary songwriting team of Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields. But one element that wasn’t falsely advertised was the scintillating on-screen dancing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
In case you care about the plot, it concerns John "Lucky" Garnett (Astaire), a talented tap dancer and gambler who travels to New York City to earn $25,000 to prove his worthiness to his wealthy fiancée back home, Margaret Watson (Betty Furness). However, complications arise when Lucky falls deeply in love with Penny Carroll (Rogers), a charming dance academy instructor he accidentally meets on the street. Together, Lucky and Penny form a sensational professional dance duo, navigating standard romantic misunderstandings, a jealous bandleader rival named Ricardo Romero (Georges Metaxa), and comedic mishaps alongside Lucky's loyal sidekick, Pop Cardetti (Victor Moore), and Penny's cynical friend, Mabel Anderson (Helen Broderick).
To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Swing Time, conducted last week, click here.
This is often ranked as the finest of the Astaire-Rogers films, and for good reason: It showcases perhaps their very best dancing to possibly the greatest repertoire of songs in any of their 10 pictures together. And the eyes don’t lie—Many believe Fred and Ginger have never looked better together, both on the dance floor and as romantic partners.
Roger Ebert, who included Swing Time in his Great Movies essay series,
wrote: “What Fred and Ginger had together, and what no other team has ever had in the same way, was a joy of performance. They were so good, and they knew they were so good, that they danced in celebration of their gifts…They brought such grace and humor that they became the touchstone of all things elegant…The chemistry between Fred and Ginger was not simply erotic, but intellectual and physical: They were two thoroughbreds who could dance better than anyone else, and knew it.” Dance critic Brian Seibert called it “the best dance film ever made because of the way that dance is integrated into the film.”
And Imogen Sara Smith
maintains that, “Of all the films Astaire and Rogers made together, Swing Time does the best job of integrating music and dance into a credible story.” She particularly praises Rogers' work in this film. “She has the universal traits of the thirties working girl: she is wised-up, suspicious, and implacably sensible. And this is precisely why Fred needs her: Ginger is his ballast. Without her, he might float off into the empyrean, loosed of all ties to earth. His temperament is as airy as his physical presence; in each film, before meeting Rogers, he is carefree…she bursts his bubble and gives him something to work for. Rogers’s physicality likewise matches her character…Her opposition and eventual surrender play out in her spine and shoulders, which go from taut to melting; her body is as expressive as it is breathtakingly lovely.”
Swing Time boasts six unforgettable songs, most set to brilliant dancing, and each a showstopper in its own right. The fun starts with Pick Yourself Up, a polka tempo tune that gets the couple’s feet moving and our toes tapping with its uplifting message and exuberant stepping. It’s also the most down-to-earth and relatable, featuring dancing that’s no less graceful or impressive than any of the formalwear numbers that follow.
Next, we hear the familiar strains of an all-time classic melody that earned the movie its single Academy Award, for Best Song, and became Astaire’s biggest hit on the music charts: The Way You Look Tonight, a foxtrot featuring Astaire singing solo.
The wordless Waltz in Swing Time oozes elegance and grace in three-quarter time, with Astaire’s tap shoes punctuating the pageantry and Ginger’s puffy-sleeved, ruffled-skirted gown satiating our senses. The eternally hummable A Fine Romance, a quickstep sung but not danced by the duet amid falling snowflakes, comments on the twosome’s iffy relationship with cleverly caustic lyrics.
As cringeworthy and socioculturally dated as it is today due to Astaire appearing in blackface, Bojangles of Harlem is actually an eye-popping sequence brimming with arresting visuals and syncopated symmetry involving 24 female performers moving in perfect step with Astaire (at one point he’s dancing with all of them at one time, stacked in a straight but oscillating line) before shifting to a wowzer-for-its-time trick photography tour de force in which Fred dances with three gigantic shadows of himself.
Then, topping all the other tunes for emotional impact and visual elegance, we get Never Gonna Dance, an artfully evergreen Art Deco spectacle that begins by presenting Astaire in lone voice mode, shot from a high angle as he laments their seemingly doomed romance, and which proves the song’s title as truthful in the moment. Eventually, the lyrics stop, and the exceptionally fancy footwork begins, bringing us the last of Swing Time’s three duet dances and closing out the picture in grand style with a cornucopia of dance styles—from balletic glides and lunging tilts to acrobatic adagio lifts and rapid-fire spins.
Like the five earlier Astaire-Rogers pictures, Swing Time continues a relatively new tradition of departing from theatrical staging-style musicals common in the early 1930s. This approach completely deviated from the standard "front-row center" stage perspective and the massive, geometric chorus girl spectacles popularized by Busby Berkeley. Instead of framing musical numbers as static stage routines performed for an in-universe audience, Stevens and Astaire integrated the dances seamlessly into the narrative itself, utilizing more fluid camera movement and tracking shots. Astair insisted that the camera capture the full bodies of the dancers (head to toe) in single, uninterrupted shots, with as few edits as possible, to preserve the beauty and integrity of the performances. Stevens moved the camera horizontally with the dancers as they moved and avoided cutaways or close-ups of faces or feet. The goal was to create a more intimate, three-dimensional, and naturalistic world than the proscenium arch of a live theater allowed.
Swing Time also marked somewhat of a change in Astaire’s choreographic style. In some instances, it melds his trademark rhythmic tap dancing with the sweeping, graceful lines of classical ballet and the expressivity of modern dance to fashion a sophisticated stylistic pastiche. Earlier Astaire pictures often emphasized traditional ballroom steps and straightforward tap routines, but here, numbers like Waltz in Swing Time and Never Gonna Dance incorporate balletic pirouettes, elongated extensions, and fluid, dramatic movements. Astaire and his dance director collaborator Hermes Pan wanted to expand the grammar of cinematic dancing beyond tap alone to better convey profound yearning and romantic tension.
Also, the songs in Swing Time aren’t one-offs or sung soliloquies siloed off from the story. The lyrics are more conversational and attuned to the narrative and the romantic dynamics, helping to advance or inform Lucky and Penny’s relationship.
Unlike earlier Astaire-Rogers collaborations, which often depict primarily European fantasy worlds populated by wealthy characters in fancy attire amid wall-to-wall lavish settings, Swing Time is set in America and was and is more relatable to audiences. It better taps into the fact that this is a contemporary story set during the Great Depression. Lucky and Pop are broke and must steal aboard a train and use pluck and impromptu resourcefulness to earn money, keep a roof over their heads, and win their love interests.
Notably, Swing Time tests our patience but also builds our eager anticipation for eurhythmics by allowing 28 minutes to pass before the first full dance number commences.
Unlike so many other cinematic pairings between Fred and Ginger, Swing Time shines thanks to savvy oversight by Stevens, a quality director known for imbuing comedic flourishes (and famous by this time for helming memorable light comedies, romance pictures, and character studies. He ended up directing a handful of masterworks in a variety of genres over his career, including Gunga Din (1939), Woman of the Year (1942), A Place in the Sun (1950), Shane (1953), and Swing Time—one of only two musicals in his filmography). We watch Swing Time for the dancing, but this is a Fred and Ginger picture you don’t have to fast forward through to get to the good parts because it’s packed with plenty of jokes, comedic callbacks, and mirthful meet-cutes in between, which this filmmaker would have prioritized. While we may not care much about the formulaic narrative or the love quadrangle, Stevens and company infuse Swing Time with jocular joy and needed laughs that still mostly land after 90 years.
The casting of Victor Moore as Pop does quite a bit of the heavy lifting in the humor department, as this fretful and maladroit sidekick gets some of the best lines and amusing interplays with other side characters. What also helps propel the comedy is a series of running gags, including Pop’s shifty card tricks, pantless protagonists, the losing and breaking of coins and currency, and, most memorably, Lucky and Penny continually being interrupted from kissing (fans would actually never see them lock lips until two years later in their eighth film). The second-best joke occurs when the police officer asks Pop to repeat what he apparently muttered under his breath, to which Pop replies, "Look out for the great big ditch” (“ditch,” of course, rhymes with or can be mistaken for other common single-syllable profanities).
For many, the funniest bit is when Lucky arrives at the house of his fiancée but is greeted by the painted portrait of a frowning family patriarch, a growling dog, and a hissing cat; after impressing Dad with his capitalistic savvy, the portrait suddenly smiles, the dog wags his tail, and the cat sidles up to Lucky’s leg in purring approval.
Swing Time has screwball sensibilities, and it’s also replete with comedic ironies: Lucky initially pretending to Penny that he has two left feet, him singing about her lovely appearance at an unlovely moment for her in mid-hair wash, and the fact that he’s a richer man with a lucky Penny than his lucky quarter. (Let’s also not forget the irony built into the film’s misleading title.)
Stevens was also known as a meticulous craftsman who notched many retakes to get the perfect scene, an ethos that meshed with Astaire’s obsessive perfectionism. They did more than 48 takes of the Never Gonna Dance sequence, according to Ginger Rogers, who suffered bleeding feet after so much dancing. This director was also enamored with Americana and stories like Swing Time that depicted the pursuit of the American Dream.
Let’s address the elephant in the room: the Bojangles of Harlem blackface number. Today, it’s deeply upsetting to see any white actor of any bygone era wearing greasepaint to make themselves look Black. This dated and distasteful imagery strikes a raw nerve, especially for African-Americans, because minstrel performers were typically condescending and denigrating of Black people, attempting to imitate or mock their appearance, culture, and mannerisms in exaggerated ways that reinforced harmful racial stereotypes.
However, what may be different about the Bojangles of Harlem sequence compared to so many other minstrel numbers in old movies is that some believe Astaire was attempting to reverently honor the talents and legacy of two African-American dance greats: Bill Bojangles Robinson, a pioneering African-American tap dancer who achieved massive nationwide popularity from the 1910s through the 1930s as a premier headliner in Vaudeville, on Broadway, and in major Hollywood films; and John Bubbles, dubbed the Father of Rhythm Tap and one of Astaire’s former teachers.
While it doesn’t lessen the blow, note that Astaire’s greasepaint isn’t as dark as was common in minstrel shows of the time, and he doesn’t accentuate his lips to further that racial caricature. Also, half of his female dance partners in the scene are wearing black outfits while the other half are wearing white, which could intentionally suggest intercultural unity and racial integration.
Nevertheless, it’s understandable for people of any color to be offended today by the presence of a blackface scene in Swing Time, and it must be acknowledged that this is a mark against the film that hampers its universal and evergreen appeal.
Flaws aside, Swing Time’s most lasting benefaction is that it reminds us of the transcendent power and enduring allure of the dance, an art form that, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, modern cinema occasionally revisits (with Chicago, The Artist, and La La Land as prominent examples in this century) to remind us that human beings practiced in the skill of moving rhythmically to music and shifting their fleet feet to the beat are eminently watchable. A world where Astaire and Rogers make heavenly hoofing look easy and attainable is a world I want to continue to live in, even if it’s merely a 103-minute monochrome fantasy that’s as antique and extinct as a Duesenberg or a double eagle coin. The way you look tonight, Ginger and Fred, is the way you’ll look every night in my memory: lithe and effervescent, dazzling and dapper, ever defiant of gravity and the ravages of time.
Swing Time is preserved in the Library of Congress's prestigious National Film Registry for its cultural and aesthetic significance and ranks #90 on the American Film Institute’s (AFI) 100 Years...100 Movies list from 2007. The Oscar-winning ballad The Way You Look Tonight slotted #43 on the AFI’s greatest songs list, and the film was also named in Entertainment Weekly’s 100 Greatest Movies list. Additionally, Swing Time earns a 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.9 out of 10 critical score vs. a 91 out of 100 Metascore on Metacritic.
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