Dancing Cheek To Cheek, Oops-Ginger Rogers And Fred Astaire’s “Roberta” (1935)-A Film Review 

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

Roberta, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Irene Dunne, music by Jerome Kern, 1935

I can’t dance, can’t dance a lick. Like a lot of guys, maybe gals too but I will just concentrate on guys here, I have two left feet. Nevertheless I have always been intrigued by people who can dance and do it well. Have been fascinated by the likes of James Brown and Michael Jackson growing up. As a kid though I, unlike most of the guys around my way, I was weaned on the musicals, the song and dance routines where the couples kicked out the jams. Top of the list in those efforts were the dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers whose dancing mesmerized a two left feet kid just at a time when I was coming of age, coming of school dance and checking out girls age and once in a while in the privacy of my lonely room I would try to work out a couple of steps sent on the big screen. No success. Although I had never viewed the Rogers-Astaire film under review back then I got a distinct rush of déjà vu watching this film, Roberta.          

Déjà vu is right since although I had not viewed the film on one of those dark Saturday afternoon matinee double-features when they were running a retrospective at the local theater I already knew what was going to happen. I had seen say Top Hat then and if the truth be known the formula did not vary that much in the whole series of song and dance films they did together. It was not about story line although it probably helped the director to have a working script so he could figure out where to have somebody burst out in song, or trip over a table and begin an extended dance routine. That said the “cover” story here is Fred leading a band of upstart Americans into gay Paree expecting to have a gig which went south on them. Fred meets Ginger working as Polish countess who is into high fashion which I expect everyone knows old Paris is famous for. That’s allows those bursts into song and dance to go forth without too much interference from the story-line. In short do as I did as a kid and now too just watch Ginger and Fred go through their paces. That’s worth the price of admission.  That and tunes like Smoke Gets In Your Eyes via the magical and under-rated composer Jerome Kern