Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. —Henry Fielding

27 July 2021

Swing Time (1936)


Barf. Swing Time is one of the least interesting Fred Astaire movies I've seen. (It was apparently Ginger Rogers' favorite of their films together. I gotta disagree, Ginger.) The fact that the songs come from out of the blue (i.e. are non-diegetic) is interesting, but the book is so long; there's so much unnecessary plot. There are four excellent Jerome Kern songs – all four are superb – but this thing is almost 100 minutes long and there are literally four songs plus two dance numbers. This is a musical? 

Also there is a blackface number in Swing Time that I found completely tedious – it also, big surprise, did not need to be in blackface.

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