Swing Time [VHS]

Swing Time [VHS]
by George Stevens

Swing Time [VHS]
List Price: $14.98
Category: VHS Video
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Product details

Actor: Eric Blore, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Helen Broderick, Victor Moore
Director: George Stevens
Writer: Allan Scott
Writer: Anthony Veiller
Writer: Ben Holmes
Writer: Dorothy Yost
Writer: Erwin S. Gelsey
Writer: Howard Lindsay
Writer: Rian James
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, NTSC, Original recording reissued
Running Time: 103 minutes
Release Date: 1999-05-04
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Turner Home Ent
Studio: Turner Home Ent

VHS Movie Reviews of Swing Time [VHS]

Movie Review: With a dime in the pocket!
Summary: 5 Stars

A promise in the dance likes to gamble. He has trouble for saving money to marry, and when he goes to NYC to get some chance he will find the love of his life.

As you may expect, the script is -in this sort of movies- less important than the visual content. After the sonorous triumph of "Top hat" this lovable couple returned to make us witness of a sympathetic romantic comedy in which we will delight before the fabulous musical numbers. Choreography, custom design and the presence of one of my eternal brides of the cinema Ginger Rogers will engage you from the very beginning.

Jerome Kern's music is the perfect device to carve in relief his gifts. "The way you look tonight" is (at least to my mind) together with "Misty", "My funny Valentine" ,"Laura", The very thought of you" and "When I fall in love" an emblematic theme for the collective memory. The agile direction of George Stevens ("Shane", "A place in the sun" and "Giant")

Astaire once more demonstrates his out of this world qualities for this art. The dance with the three shadows on the screen is still a reminded cult sequence.

Movie Review: Delightful
Summary: 5 Stars

Swing Time is lots of fun, with singing, dancing, and romance. The picture/sound quality is quite good for this old of movie. The film is clean but not squeaky (low cut dress, a mouthed profanity).

Movie Review: I think this is the greatest musical of all time.
Summary: 5 Stars

The DVD transfer is good but not great. It is still very watchable.

While MGM was featuring Jeanette McDonald and Warner Bros. was turning out Busby Berkeley shows, RKO released a series of danced based musicals featuring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Not only did they out dance the other studios, they found greater chemistry too. I can't think of any musical number ever to top "Never Gonna Dance." Passion and love, great dance moves and a song that says it all, "Never gonna dance, only gonna love". "Swing Time" is every thing a musical should be and more. Every song is memorable and Ginger is perfect in her performance (Fred too!). "The Way you Look Tonight", a non-dance number, won the Oscar for best song and it's been a standard every since. Frank Sinatra recorded it many years later. I also really like "Pick Yourself Up". This is beautiully performed with pratfalls and sensational dual dancing roled into a fun and exciting number I never forget.

I often debated myself on the merits of "Swing Time" vs. "Top Hat" and it's close. But, I give the nod here for best musical of all time.

Recommended for: All movie fans and the whole family. This is genre topping jewel.

Movie Review: 'Shadow Dance' Is The Best
Summary: 3 Stars

There is one tremendous dance scene in here by Fred Astaire which includes three big shadows on the wall in back of him as he dances. I think it's one of Fred's all-time best numbers; very inventive and always great to watch. There are also a few good dance scenes with Fred and Ginger. Some of the songs from this film became "standards," such as "The Way You Look Tonight" and "Pick Yourself Up."

The script is corny with the typical marriages made out of "spite;" angle, which seemed to be popular in this era. Overall, there are a number of other Astaire films I'd choose over this, but then again, to see either Fred or Ginger dancing can never be underestimated. They were a fabulous team and great individual talents.

Movie Review: A Wonderful Film
Summary: 5 Stars

I concur with the five star reviews of this wonderful film. The gags are great, the acting superlative, and the dancing is just out of this world. It has so much great dancing, singing, and acting, that in truth, I don't know of ANY musical that can come close to its high quality. This is the top of the top.

I might be a minority, but I like the humor. It's cleverer than in "Top Hat", and much less corny than "Singing in the Rain"...and I think the lively plot has more turns in it than the California Coastal Highway. The reason is that this is the Astaire/Rogers film where Fred can't make up his mind about Ginger...because he has made a prior commitment, of a sort, to another woman. This is the fun of the plot...which Ellen Broderick, as Penny's friend...and the audience's commentator...sees clearly throughout the film. I think the plot is not so fragile as some have proposed.

And I'm not thrown off much by Metaxa turning into a good guy at the end. When his own bride is laughing at him at his own wedding, I think that's a pretty powerful incentive for him to back off. And becoming a nice guy is a valid option to cut his losses...in front of his own orchestra, the pastor, and all his friends. Romero had already shown himself to be influenced by public pressure, when Lucky traps him into playing the "Waltz in Swing Time" so he can dance with Penny....how much more so at his own wedding!

It's also predicted by Penny when she says to Lucky that Romero: "is very nice". And Fred's answer is also predictive: "You must be joking.". In the end...the whole story turns into comedy...which was a George Stevens forte as a director.

I should also add that this film was a high point of black and white photography, and that compared to...what I think are the highly self-referential bright and primary colored musicals...I find the links to the real world of the depression to be not only valid, but moving. The black and white adds to the quasi neo-realist and subtle effect. Fred and Ginger play an upwardly mobile couple...substantiating and fulfilling the deferred dreams of millions of depression-era Americans. "Singing in the Rain", as great as it surely is, to me, has no such poignancy...and its overly smooth transitions from plot to dance, are less effective than the swelling anticipation of the coming of something truly wonderful.

I think this is an extraordinary film with just so many high points, in both song and dance...I can't imagine how it can be rated at anything less than five stars. It's brilliant cinema...and one of the most magical films ever made.
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Summary of Swing Time [VHS]

If you only had one Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers film to watch, this classic musical from 1936 would be your best bet. It was the dance duo's sixth film together, and director George Stevens handled the material with as much flair behind the camera as Fred and Ginger displayed in front of it. This time out, Fred plays a gambling hoofer who's engaged to marry a young socialite (Betty Furness), but when he's late for the wedding his prospective father-in-law sends him away, demanding that he earn $25,000 before he can earn his daughter's hand in marriage. When Fred meets Ginger in a local dance studio (where he pretends to be a klutz so she can be his instructor), he's instantly smitten and the $25,000 deal becomes a moot point. Featuring six songs by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields (including a splendid rendition of "The Way You Look Tonight") and some of the most elegant dance sequences ever filmed, this lightweight fluff epitomizes the jazz-age style of 1930s musicals, virtually defining the genre with graceful joie de vivre. --Jeff Shannon

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