Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Christopher Reid This is the first Astaire/Rogers film I've seen and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. The dancing is great, of course. They seem to float or glide above the floor. I was impressed by both of them, the way they make it look so effortless. It's exciting and makes you want to get up and somehow be a part of it. They spin so quickly but their heads remain steady and controlled. Rogers never seems to hold onto Astaire but is always in the right place. She contacts him via her waist and with that connection they seem to get all the leverage they need.I enjoyed the Jerome Kern songs. They're catchy and memorable in a nice way. I liked some of the locations, outside in the snow, the dance studio and the stages. It was cool seeing the three shadows dancing above Astaire. They eventually diverge from his actions and then you realise he's been dancing in sync with a pre-recorded silhouette the whole time. Some of the comedy moments were quite good, especially with the supporting cast. I loved the dance lessons manager and the dirty looks he gave to his employees as they kept being negative towards customers.But other aspects didn't impress me as much. The love story is very thin and artificial. It feels completely arbitrary. It's given no meaning or significance. Both lovers end up easily getting engaged to people they apparently don't love. Their friends have no problem sabotaging their weddings for personal benefit. It didn't strike me as funny so much as flippant. Astaire makes me smile or laugh occasionally but not enough. I also didn't like the gambling. It's highly unrealistic and promotes a dangerous habit. Bond movies are different somehow, they're more psychological and sexy. This movie feels too random and I found I didn't like all of the humour and had to keep waiting for the brilliant dance sequences.I didn't even notice it but the dances are generally filmed in continuous takes and capture the full bodies of the performers. One scene uses a crane to go from a lower stage to a higher one. No cutting away to an audience or close-ups of faces or legs. It goes to show that good film-making is seamless and makes you forget you're watching a movie. All I remember about the dances is how fun and incredible they were. If they were badly filmed, I would have been distracted and picked up on many little details.I'm looking forward to seeing more Astaire/Rogers movies. I did enjoy Swing Time but it seems flawed to me. I don't think the duo is great at comedy. It's too obvious or predictable. Astaire keeps pulling funny faces and only some of them surprise me or feel like genuine character moments. With Keaton and Chaplin, you always sensed the love in their films was sincere. Their characters were truly affected by things. They never simply played to the audience.But Astaire and Rogers seem more like cartoon characters. Frivolous and back to square one after each scene. Maybe they're together, maybe they're apart. I guess I'll just try to enjoy the jokes and singing and dancing along the way.

mark.waltz While "The Gay Divorcée" and "Top Hat" remain listed on the top of the Astaire/Rogers pairings, I feel that it is "Swing Time" that is their greatest. It starts off winningly with Fred pretending to be a klutz of a dancer so he can get a lesson from the pretty Ginger, resulting in the revealing "Pick Yourself Up" where all of a sudden he breaks into a tap and shows her that he's no clod with two left feet. Their romance is the epitome of what Katharine Hepburn said to describe them: "She gave him sex; he gave her class." Indeed, Fred is an odd looking leading man-extremely skinny with thinning hair and a long face that manages to glow when he smiles. Their romance blooms into a fabulous dance partnership which opens a nightclub, and on the night of their opening, the fiancée (Betty Furness) he forgot to mention shows up. While the plot doesn't sound like much, it is the presentation which makes it a classic. Astaire and Rogers get to sing and dance quite elegantly to the Oscar Winning "The Way You Look Tonight" then spar to "A Fine Romance", one of the great comedy duets ever performed on stage or screen. Astaire puts on black-face in the brilliantly staged "Bojangles of Harlem" which has some brilliant musical cords, and even if the manner in which is presented is quite controversial today, it remains one of his greatest solo numbers. The comedy relief is provided by wise-cracking Helen Broderick (returning from "Top Hat") and Victor Moore, the cutest chubby character actor to make it big on stage and screen. He was already a legend on Broadway when he made this, and the success of this lead to him being given some leading roles in a few "B" programmers, two of which co-starred the wonderful Broderick. When people speak of Eve Arden as the great wise-cracker of the silver screen, they need to remember that Broderick was around before, and while not as glamorous as Arden, she often stole every scene she was in.Add in fussy Eric Blore as the head of the dance agency where Rogers and Broderick worked in the opening segment, and you have a consistently entertaining film which has stood the test of time. A Broadway version of this ("Never Gonna Dance") was underrated when it opened in 2002 and closed quickly; Perhaps fans felt why look for phony Astaire and Rogers when the real thing is easily available. But the show was elegantly staged, and even if unnecessary, provided me with an evening of entertainment that I will never forgot. It's ironic, however, that the supporting characters got the best notices, with former Broadway leading lady Karen Ziemba tossing off sardonic comments in the Broderick role (and receiving a Tony nomination) and Peter Bartlett in the small role that Blore played. To play on the character's obvious feminine traits, the name of the character was changed to "Pangborn" in honor of that hysterically funny portrayer of sissy characters (Franklin Pangborn), and it remained one of the show's highlights. When the leads broke into "The Way You Look Tonight", I could hear a gasp of recognition from the older ladies in the audience, and I knew that if it didn't strike the critics, it certainly won them over.Technically, "Swing Time" is an absolutely perfect film with a great art decco set and quick editing in the musical numbers to make them move rather than just stand still. The costumes are all exceptional, and with the fantastic songs and choreography, everything simply comes together. This is the film where I think that Astaire and Rogers have the best chemistry, and even Moore and Broderick with their major age difference come off romantic as well, certainly no Fred and Ethel Mertz. It is obvious that everybody was having fun, even if the hard work shows, and that makes for one of the very best original movie musicals ever made.

Claudio Carvalho The dancer and gambler Lucky Garnett (Fred Astaire) misses his wedding with Margaret Watson (Betty Furness) due to a prank of the other performers and his future father-in-law calls off the ceremony. When Lucky arrives at his fiancée's home, he promises to make US$ 25,000.00 to be allowed to marry her.Lucky travels to New York by train with his friend and magician Pop Cardetti (Victor Moore) and he stumbles with the dance instructor Penny Carroll (Ginger Rogers) on the streets of the big city. He follows her to the dance academy and they team-up in the end. When they are ready to dance together in an elegant club, Penny's former affair and conductor of the orchestra Ricky Romero (Georges Metaxa) refuses to play for them.Meanwhile Lucky wins lots of money gambling and Penny falls in love with him. Lucky decides to stop gambling in order to NOT raise US$ 25,000.00. But when Margaret arrives in the club to see his show, Lucky has to take a decision about his previous commitment with Margaret and his true love with Penny."Swing Time" is another delightful and naive romance of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. The story is very funny specially the scenes where the clumsy Pop participates and this is the first time that I see Ginger Rogers' character chasing Fred Astaire's one. As usual, there are wonderful dance numbers with this charming couple. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Ritmo Louco" ("Crazy Rhythm")

Michael Thompson Where would we be without them ? No I'm not talking about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I'm not even talking about the Hollywood musical.What I'm talking about are the Great American Songwriters, Composers, and Lyricists in the 30's and 40's who created the Hollywood musical and who in turn gave jobs to musicians, dancers, orchestra leaders, and singers.Yet how little these creative men and woman are known, or even mentioned today, ?, rarely if at all is the answer to that question.We can thank Composer Jerome Kern for writing not only the music in Swing Time, but also for writing countless melodies that we know today, and with various lyricists.On Swing Time, Mr Kern's lyricist was Dorothy Fields. Miss Fields wrote, "pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again, Mr Kern wrote the bouncy playful melody.I have been an enthusiast of American's great songwriters of the 20's 30's and 40's all my life, their creative genius has given me an interest and much joy.So when people go to see a musical written in the past, they should remember that the musical they have just enjoyed the songs of, had to be composed first, then words had to be written.Swing Time had music Jerome Kern and lyrics by Dorothy Fields.And the other writers for Astaire and Rodgers musicals were Cole Porter music and lyrics. Irving Berlin music and lyrics. And George Gershwin music, with brother Ira writing the lyrics.So, in this review I am paying not only a tribute to Mr Astaire and Miss Rogers, I am also paying a tribute to Mr Jerome Kern who penned thousand of songs with different lyric writers during his life, including Swing Time.And I'm paying an equally tribute to Miss Dorothy Fields who also wrote her streetwise lyrics with various composers through her lifetime, including Swing Time.It all boils down to this.The audiences of the 30's and 40's were more mature and sophisticated than today's audiences because they had to be having just come through the second World War.Todays audience is largely immature and childish because they do not have the same struggles, and today's so-called music reflects this.