Astaire & Rogers Collection: Volume 1

During the bleak years of the Great Depression, American moviegoers found themselves cheered by the periodic screen pairings of former Broadway hoofer Fred Astaire and Hollywood glamour girl Ginger Rogers. Their star vehicles employed airy plots and stereotyped characters, but they were lavishly mounted in the best Art Deco tradition and peopled with first-rate supporting players. But it was really the music—the songs and, most of all, the dancing—that so entranced the audiences in the 1930s. The composers of the scores for these movies read like a Who's Who of Popular Music: Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields. And those songs! Instant hits back then, many of them remain standards today: “Cheek to Cheek,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” “They Can't Take That Away From Me,” “Let's Face the Music and Dance,” and countless others—all were introduced in the films collected in this deluxe boxed set, another Warner Home Video winner. Remastered for high definition and outfitted with terrific supplemental features (including commentaries, new featurettes, vintage shorts, and classic cartoons), these five movies are the cream of the Astaire-Rogers crop. Depending upon whom you believe, either Top Hat (1935) or Swing Time (1936) is the best film Fred and Ginger made together. My vote would go to the former, with its sensational Berlin score and its goofy mistaken-identity plot. But Swing Time, with beautiful songs by Kern and Fields, isn't far behind. For that matter, neither are Follow the Fleet (1936) and Shall We Dance (1937). The duo's final film, The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), doesn't quite measure up to the earlier ones but is still enjoyable. These movies were intended to provide escapist entertainment, so they were deliberately crammed with absurd and implausible situations, but once the dancing began, audiences were transfixed. Decades later, Astaire and Rogers remain the gold standard couple for those who love classic movie musicals. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (E. Hulse)