GingerRogers Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Even the weirder artists of the twentieth century have been attracted to the allure of Hollywood filmmaking, and Salvador Dali was no exception. In the fall of 1941, the surrealist painter hosted a masquerade party at Pebble Beach during one of his regular visits to the town. Called "Surrealism Night in An Enchanted Forest," the fundraising event, intended to assist European refugee artists, brought out a number of stars, including Bob Hope and Ginger Rogers. It was here, the story goes, that Dali became attached to a major studio production called Moontide. The great German emigre Fritz Lang was hired to direct the movie, and asked Dali to create a three-minute nightmare sequence for the film. Unfortunately, after the incident at Pearl Harbor later that year, Twentieth Century Fox deemed the project too bleak. Lang was replaced, and Dali's nightmare sequence went with him.

Although inspired by the movies, Dali didn't always have the easiest time making them. He would get another chance to inject his hallucinatory vision into American cinema with the hypnosis scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, but it's his unrealized projects that truly indicate the scope of the painter's ambition. So many ideas, such little time. Dali: Painting and Film, a breathtakingly unique exhibit currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, surveys Dali's completed cinematic works in addition to tidbits from the ones that never came to fruition. Marvelously structured to show how his paintings were intentionally cinematic, the exhibit contains all the obvious highlights from Dali's movie career alongside lesser-known productions. The importance in film history of his collaborations with Luis Bunuel remain uncontested; two large screens in separate rooms showing Un Chien Andalou (where the opening eye splicing retains its original gross-out impact) and L'Age D'Or attest to that. Fewer visitors, however, might know about Dali's collaboration with the Marx Brothers on a deliriously strange movie that sounded too good to be true.

When new people float into my life, with the intention of being my friend or (god forbid) my boyfriend, there are certain paces I tend to put them through. There are pre-requistes; there are cultural requirements. At some point, I sit all new people down and I make sure they watch one of the nine films made at RKO during the 1930s starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

These are films that you can either sit through or you can't. You either loathe, or appreciate and even have a soft spot for the hokey humor; these dance numbers are either the sexiest things you've ever seen, or ... they're just not. But ultimately, it's an ideology thing. Throughout their ten films together, Fred and Ginger essentially tell the same utopian love story, one that repeatedly flounts the institution of marriage, whilst suggesting that the implicit sexual content of dance is a more potent form of infidelity than explicit sexual activity.

You're not going to go wrong with any of the films in the just-released Astaire & Rogers Collection (well, it should be said that The Barkleys of Broadway, Fred and Ginger's reunion after ten years apart, is clearly lacking when seen alongside the earlier works), and the special features – from scholarly commentaries to animated shorts – are ample and appreciated. But there's one masterpiece in this collection: everything that's valuable about the partnership between Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers never seems more clear than in George Stevens' Swing Time.

At long last, some of the most magical musicals ever made have come to DVD:  The Astaire and Rogers Collection (Vol 1!  There are more coming? Hooray!) is released today. The set includes Shall We Dance, Top Hat, Swing Time, Follow the Fleet, and The Barkleys of Broadway.  Shall We Dance, Swing Time, and Top Hat all feature commentary, and there are making-of shorts, random cartoons, and assorted other goodies on the discs.

In Top Hat (my personal favorite by a mile) Astaire is somehow both dorky and debonair; both leering and comforting, while Rogers carries herself with dignity and grace in the face of his endless provocations.  Though the most famous scene in the film is the one in which Astiare lulls a pissed off Rogers to sleep by dancing on sand on the floor above her room, the "Isn't This a Lovely Day (to be Caught in the Rain)" sequence is much more impressive.