90. Swing Time

"Listen. No one could teach you to dance in a million years. Take my advice and save your money!" -Penny

Oh MAN does it feel nice to get back on the movie watching circuit. This is the story of a dancer by the name of Lucky who is an amazing dancer, and an even better (or shall I say... "luckier"? hahahahahahahaha) gambler. He leaves his hometown after his dance troupe (or crew as people today would know them) played and he proposed to a woman he grew up with. He leaves to earn $25,000 as she is from a wealthy family. True to musical tradition, he falls in love with somebody else AND SHE IS A DANCER AS WELL. He tries his best to avoid it at all costs but eventually gave in and what we get is singing, dancing, and some loveable secondary characters.

My mom and I agreed that this movie was probably so-so but every song and dance are now classic pieces of entertainment. I found myself humming this song (below) where Lucky, his new flame (Penny) his friend (Pop) and her friend (Mabel) go to the country for the day. Lucky told Pop to not let him be alone with Penny because they will inevitably fall for each other and break the heart of his fiancee back home. It's also in this scene Penny discovers the true reason behind Lucky's cold ways.



Oh my goodness! This video reminded me! The cinematography was superb for a 1936 film! Dance scenes ran as one long continuous shot, crane shots, and a bit of what appears to be green screen technology... but its probably advanced camera trickery. I love that abouit old movies, they didn't just say, "Oh we'll just get special effects on that and add it in later" they had to plan these things out extensively and went to huge lengths, an almost magical process.

I love how people used to sing back then, Ginger Rogers seems to have this really rich voice and its just... aw man =F

I'm not really going to tell you all to get off your computer and watch it, but if you have nothing else to watch and its between this and Sophie's Choice... pick Swing Time.

Watching progress note: Our disc skipped a bit so we had to fast forward through some scenes but I don't think we missed anything. Only had to watch this one twice because of how late we started watching it the first time.


Next Movie: The Swing Time (1999)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sixth_Sense