Hacker Cinema
Top Hat
1935 · Film · 99 min
Directed by Mark Sandrich
Showman Jerry Travers is working for producer Horace Hardwick in London. Jerry demonstrates his new dance steps late one night in Horace's hotel room, much to the annoyance of sleeping Dale Tremont below. She goes upstairs to complain and the two are immediately attracted to each other. Complications arise when Dale mistakes Jerry for Horace.
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3 comments on Hacker News
> Saying that purists want people to suffer is quite misleading
Not at all. I've watched enough movies where the director clearly wanted the viewer to suffer, based on the idea that only through suffering can the viewer be enlightened. The suffering is in the form of making a bad movie.
Solaris comes to mind. I've tried to watch it multiple times, but the director (and the director's fans) clearly revel in the notion that one must suffer through the movie, and that's the point of it. The movie is boring on every level - bad dialog, bad plot, bad cinematography, bad pacing, bad acting, everything is bad about it. And it's (small) number of fervent fans love it for its wretchedness. They can keep it :-)
I saw a colorized version of Metropolis a few decades ago. The technology to do it right wasn't there, but it was enjoyable in a way the original was not. I've since watched the full version when the missing footage was found, and there's an ideal film that would benefit from the application of modern technology. I bet Fritz Lang would love it.
TCM also ran a version of the silent "Wings". They added some color in a few spots, and some airplane engine sounds. Even just that little bit made the picture much more watchable.
I'd like to see the FM Busby musicals fixed up.
Some movies I wouldn't touch would be Top Hat. It's perfect as it is :-)
Compare Astaire's dance movies with the awful ones they make to day, which are more a sequence of quick cut sweaty frenetic gymnastic fragments than dancing. I can almost hear the director yelling "More energy! Hit that line harder!"
Astaire's movies would film the complete dance in one cut, and show his full body. His dances were about style, elegance, and complete mastery.
See "Top Hat" and "The Gay Divorcee".
Most of the movies you mentioned were made after 1953. (The Hays code started in 1934.) You substantiated my point!
Just for fun, watch several movies 1930-32. Then watch some in 34-35. It's like the life got sucked out of them. Yes, I know there were exceptions. One is "Top Hat", 1935, which skirted the Code with double-talk and innuendo.
> When the Hays Office learned that several actors, who were known within the industry to be gay, had been cast in this film, they sent a terse warning to RKO Studios. Particularly, in regards to Erik Rhodes and Edward Everett Horton, they warned that they should "avoid any idea of actors being pansy in character."
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027125/trivia?item=tr2614567
Nevertheless, Rhodes still got in his lines.