Word: gingering
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...5min.10sec. sequence (filmed in a mere six shots, and with most of the dance done in just two shots) is Fred's test to see how far Ginger will follow him - as a dancer, because in these movies to dance is to love - and how expertly she can keep up with him. Astaire's singing, Rogers' silent re-acting and the pair's dance coax each bit of drama and humor out of the lyric and music. What follows is my attempt to render complex emotions and glorious movement in prose; it's just the Cliff Notes to a blithe...
...Welcome back. The song's setting is a gazebo in a London park, to which Ginger has repaired because of threatening weather. Fred is there too; they've met before, in strained circumstances, and she feels uneasy in his presence. He wears a business suit, she's in riding gear with a cute fedora. A thunderclap sends her rushing into his arms for shelter. Chagrined at her momentary dependence on him, she retreats. Nonchalantly, he explains that a storm is Nature's way of showing how two people come together. A boy cloud and a girl cloud spark, and that...
...sits down, and he sits next to her, but really behind her, so we can see her singing into her ear. She rarely looks back at him. In the first few bars Fred keeps time by lightly slapping his thigh three times. A few bars later, Ginger keeps time with her riding crop; is it a leather metronome, or a potential instrument of torture...
...music breaks (at, aptly, the moment where the vocal would be "Oh what a break for me"), Fred executes his first big figure, spinning toward us and giving it a showbizzy, hands-out finish, then folding his arms as if waiting for Ginger to foul up. He dares her to match him and, through competition, to be a partner in his dance-romance. She does the same step, but to the left, with smaller arm elevation, and, instead of the beseeching capper, ends with a modest stamp of her right foot - abrupt, dismissive, ever-so-slightly Fred-deflating. Her message...
...Ginger strolls away from Fred. He follows her, and as they move upstage she throws in a cute little step that the music doesn't allow him to duplicate - a cheap little triumph that he acknowledges by wheeling on one foot and raising his hand to his mouth. For 12 bars they do some snazzy vaudeville tap figures in synch and turn in toward each other. This is the moment when dancers would normally embrace and spin off together, but these two stop just short of touching. This tactic continues through most of the number: every time the music...