Edgar Allan Pooh . . . so people who watch SHALL WE DANCE before viewing the MUSIC OF brief "Bonus Feature" on the 2005 Turner DVD will not be surprised to hear that Songster George Gershwin died of a brain tumor within a few months of composing them, or be shocked to listen to a (no doubt partial) list of nine numbers written for but cut from the final version of SHALL WE DANCE. Five people are credited with fashioning the convoluted plot for DANCE, and it would not flabbergast any DANCE watcher to learn that several of THEM also were fighting terminal brain diseases at this time. From the Racially Insensitive early "Petrov" tap routine supposedly taking place among a steamship's Black coal stokers to the finale's title song rip-off of Busby Berkeley's "I've Only Got Eyes for You" piece, DANCE features more misfires than hits. Nearly every note of a healthy George Gershwin's earlier PORGY AND BESS is a triumph, but clearly coming within the orbit of the cadaverous Fred Astaire--who had recently mocked Bill "Bojangles" Robinson IN BLACKFACE, of all things!--hastened the former's demise. Whatever ability Ginger Rogers may have had to be a saving grace for DANCE is greatly diminished by her very limited role here in one of her weakest movie outings.

vert001 Somewhere I read that you'll think more highly of the Astaire/Rogers SHALL WE DANCE if it's the first of their movies that you've seen. Watching them in order leaves you with the impression that we've seen all this before, and what's more, that we've seen it all done better before as well.Unquestionably the great strength of the film is its musical score, by my count the fifth great musical score in a row for the series, but I'd have to agree with George Gershwin that it wasn't used very well. The main problem: Ginger and Fred don't dance together enough. Indeed, they only have one major duet in the whole movie, danced to 'They All Laughed'. It's a dandy, but even here they'd done comparable dances even more brilliantly in ROBERTA, TOP HAT AND SWING TIME. Of course, they also roller skate, and practically everyone adores the scene so who am I to knock it? Nevertheless, I miss them dancing, and the final duet to the title song comes and goes in about 30 seconds and only whets my appetite for more.After giving possibly the best performance in the entire series in SWING TIME, Ginger Rogers seems off here, irritable practically from beginning to end and considerably less fun than she was in the rest of the series (and during practically the rest of her career). The fact that she was the victim of an extortion attempt during the film's shooting may have had something to do with it. For those interested, she received a note demanding $50,000 or else they would kill Ginger's mother. Turning it over to the FBI, the fellow was apprehended at the scheduled drop point and turned out to be a sailor who was simply after the money, not the mother. He'd chosen Ginger because she was his favorite actress!But getting back to the movie, unlike in the rest of the series the songs are generally ill-fitted into the plot. While it's not unusual for Fred's solo to be a simple exhibition of his dancing ability that has little to do with the rest of the film, it is unusual for their major duets to move the plot exactly nowhere. As John Mueller points out in ASTAIRE DANCES, during the marvelous dance to 'They All Laughed', Ginger's character seems to be loosening up emotionally and moving closer to Fred's, the typical character movement in their up tempo numbers, but here she simply reverts to exactly where she had been before, i.e., simply resentful towards him. It's as if the dance had never happened. And what her motivation was for the reconciliation dance at the end I'll never understand. Would you be attracted to someone dancing with people wearing masks of you? I'd more likely call the nearest mental hospital.Speaking of motivation, what exactly would possess Fred to suddenly play hard to get once Ginger had finally invited him into her apartment on their wedding night? It did lead to probably the most artful shot that Mark Sandrich devised in the entire series (the one of them both hesitating before opposite sides of the door between them), but still...Ah, I'm sure I'm being too hard on SHALL WE DANCE. It's an elaborate production featuring two great performers, a few laughs, and terrific music. Who could ask for anything more?

Robert J. Maxwell This must be judged one of the lesser examples of Fred and Ginger's work. Not that it's so poor it should be avoided. It's mostly that here they don't get together and dance often or intricately enough. The story makes little sense, but then none of their plots ever did. They're beside the point. But, anyway, this is the one in which Astaire imitates a Russian ballet dancer.George Gershwin was finally seduced into writing songs for a movie but the producers were wary. George had a tendency to write classical music, the kiss of death, even with jazz elements. He had to telegram the producers with a reassuring message that he was determined to "write hits." As it turned out, the tunes were pleasant enough, including "Slap That Bass" (in the simulacrum of a ship's engine room), and the title tune. Two of the songs became standards: "They Can't Take That Away From Me" and "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off". (You say tomayto and I say tomah-to.) In many ways, the most inventive tune has no lyrics at all. It's called "Promenade" and appears when Astaire and Rogers walk their dogs on the deck of an ocean liner.And if you've ever wondered what the design style known as Art Deco was, you should definitely check this movie out because the style is here in all its extravagance in the production design by Van Nest Polglase, who by this time was having trouble with the bottle -- the white sets and furniture, the frosted glass with etched deer, the uninterpretable curlicues, and all the rest of it. It's often claimed that it Polglase's sets, all the telephones and their cords were white. It's a bloody lie. The telephones here are silver.Anyway, Gershwin did manage to avoid anything resembling classical music -- a good idea since neither dancer was trained in ballet -- except for one number featuring Harriet Hoctor, a former Ziegfield Follies entertainer. OMG, what a woman. She dances well enough, fingertips aflutter, more skillfully and more flamboyantly feminine than Ginger Rogers, but then she does this THING with her back. En point, she bends backwards into such a lengthy arc that her head almost touches the floor -- and then she repeatedly taps the top of her head with the toe of her ballet slipper. It's a shtick that belongs in an out take from "The Exorcist." There's an earlier number with Astaire and Rogers on roller skates but I could never find much grace in roller skating.It begins slowly. It's an hour almost before the two leads dance together. And the end has dozens of women dancing around wearing masks of Ginger Rogers' face. The movie didn't make as much money as earlier outings. Time for something new -- but what? The pair tried a musical biography of a pair of real dancers whose time had long passed, Vernon and Irene Castle. Maybe what they needed was a stronger and funnier plot line. Rogers never got one in a musical. Astaire had only one, "The Bandwagon" in the early 50s. I remember when Ginger Rogers passed away. She merited one or two lines in Newsweek, hardly a whisper. It was fifty years or more since her heyday and Americans have little interest in vernacular history.

ilprofessore-1 Surely one of the silliest and most improbable plots in all the Astaire-Rogers series –-and that's saying a lot! — this 1937 film still features many delights: foremost among them of course are the dances of Fred solo and with Ginger, and the now classic songs of the Gershwin brothers. Amazingly, some of the best of these, the immortal "They Can't Take That Away from Me" for example, take up only a minute or two of screen time, as if the producers at RKO couldn't wait to get them over with so they could get back to the story. More time in the film is given over to the confused and outraged antics of floor manager Eric Blore than to some greatest songs in the great American Song Book. The film ends, however, with a breath-taking bit of pure exuberance, American dancing at its very, very best. The quarreling lovers are reunited singing and dancing to the title song. "Shall we dance or keep on moping?" As then and now a very good question. Absurd plot line and bad jokes aside, a film classic well worth watching again and again.