United States

As the title song puts it, Top Hat (1935) simply 'reeks of class.' There was no more perfect partnership in movies than that of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers - a couple who could establish, alone or together, a style of artifice that didn't dim but actually illuminated their humanity. As the mistaken-identity plot swings from a stuffy London men's club to a Venice that only a film studio could have built, Pandro S. Berman's production makes every element click into place with virtuoso ease. The dance numbers are among the best on film. There is the slyly sexy little one that Astaire does in the room above Ginger's boudoir to cajole her back to slumbers; the 'singing an' dancing' enchantment in the rain when she jubilantly copies every step with which he challenges her when a storm isolates them on the stage of a park bandstand; and the inspired inventiveness of Top Hat, White Tie and Tails in which Astaire (so clad) guns down a line-up of henchmen with his cane. lrving Berlin's music and lyrics are this pair's emotional visiting cards - just watch Ginger's enraptured reactions as Fred sings Cheek to Cheek to her: dialogue couldn't have said as much. The film knows when to kid itself - as in The Piccolino number in Venice, a dance which Irving Berlin originally wanted to name 'the Lido' (so that he could add, 'Its very good for your libido.') He didn't, but it's still witty. Even the water in the Venetian canals was dyed black so as to off-set the 'Big white Set' that had become designer Van Nest Polglase's visual signature on the RKO style in this period of movie musicals. In 1935 thousands flocked to see Top Hat; and it's even more irresistible nowadays to catch the infection of its world of instant wish-fulfilment in which, as the dance critic Arlene Croce has said, the characters seem to spend the whole of their lives in evening dress. ALEXANDER WALKER