Swing Time

The slow burn of misunderstanding brings Fred and Ginger together at last in the second of Stevens’ three musicals for RKO, long before he got into the serious business of Shane and Giant and The Diary of Anne Frank. ‘No one could teach you to dance in a million years’ is typical of the irony’s light touch. However, if plot, script and supporters are below par, the score by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields is peerless – ‘A Fine Romance’, ‘The Way You Look Tonight’, ‘Pick Yourself Up’, and Fred’s turn with Berkeley-esque trimmings, ‘Bojangles of Harlem’. And nothing Fred and Ginger did together surpasses their lengthy, climactic duet, taking off from ‘Never Gonna Dance’, which reminds you that dance is the most perfect sexual metaphor of them all.