Cinema
Top Hat
Mark Sandrich · 1935
Synopsis
Jerry Travers, an American dancer, comes to London to appear in a show produced by Horace Hardwick. His tap dancing, in the middle of the night, wakes Dale Tremont, who lodges on the floor below; she comes up to complain, and he falls in love with her. But Dale mistakes him for Horace, the husband of her friend Madge. Jerry follows her to the Lido in Venice, where she presents the dresses of the couturier Alberto Beddini, while Bates, Horace's valet, is instructed to keep watch on her.
Context
Irving Berlin wrote the songs for the film, his first complete score since 1930; he kept his royalties and ten per cent of the profits beyond one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of receipts, and earned 285,000 dollars from it. Ginger Rogers had designed her own feather dress, which shed feathers everywhere; Astaire, who wanted it abandoned, afterwards nicknamed her Feathers. The film left a profit of 1,325,000 dollars, the largest of RKO in the 1930s.
Who it is for
A film of an hour and forty minutes, with a thin plot and long dance numbers. A version dubbed into French circulated on video.
Prizes and reception
Four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, the greatest success of the Astaire and Rogers partnership, and added in 1990 to the National Film Registry.
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