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Essentially a redress of Top Hat with ballet plugged into the plot contrivance and George and Ira Gershwin in place of Irving Berlin, Shall We Dance comes so close to recreating the delicate perfection of prior pairings that it’s frustrating when it falls just short. The major problem is that a bit of Shall We Dance feels stiff kneed when trying to go for a rat-a-tat-tat routine. It just seems like there’s almost too much here that the escapist dilettante nature of their best pairings feels a bit too overburdened.
Something like the Russian ballet feels too highbrow for the bubble delicate world of Fred and Ginger. They’re best in parts where they’re either recognizably in an approximation of the real world, or in complete glitterati mode where their concerns and bank accounts are fantasies for the rest of us. They’re caught somewhere in-between those two modes here, and Shall We Dance feels unsettled as the pair’s courtship is built around forced publicity. Fred and Ginger are flimsy baubles, and this feels too cynical for their world.
Where Shall We Dance excels at though is in its variety of song and dance sequences. From the “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” where they flirt and spare on roller skates to the “Shall We Dance/Finale Coda” where background dancers wear Ginger Rogers’ face as a mask in a kind of hallucinatory dream, this is one of the best choreographed films ever. “Rehearsal Fragments” displays Astaire performing ballet and tap in a hybrid style that reminds me of how his flailing is still more graceful and elegant than my ability to sit still. The only thing missing is the romantic duet between the stars, which I guess you could argue is what happens during the finale but by that point the central romance hasn’t developed with the naturalness of prior films.
If this was, as originally intended, to be the swan song of their pairing, then they could’ve done much worse. They had opulent sets, lovely costumes, key supporting players, and one of their strongest songbooks here. The overly convoluted script and stiff portions are a problem, but there’s still some magic to be found here. Who else could make falling in roller skates look so tony?
