Romancefest 3: Sadiefest - Royal Wedding

Fred Astaire, Romancefest alum from such greats as TOP HAT and SWING TIME returns in ROYAL WEDDING. As usual, Astaire plays a song and dance man, this time teamed up in a brother and sister act with his guy crazy sister (Jane Powell). The two entertainers are married to their career, so Powell only has time to date guys for a couple days at a time, but she has a big enough appetite to keep the guys stacked up. Astaire, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have time for any romance at all, and neither performer cares to ever get married.

That is, until they're summoned to England during the weeks leading up to titular wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip in order to perform their successful stage show in London. Brother and sister find unlikely romances in the likes of a dancer in their upcoming show (Sarah Churchill) and a Lord who has as healthy an appetite for women as Powell has for men (Peter Lawford). Unfortunately, Churchill is in the middle of a long distance relationship with an incommunicative fiance and Powell is having second thoughts about committing the rest of her life to Lawford and giving up her career.

Of course, as with most Astaire films, ROYAL WEDDING has a plot that is a mere clothesline to hang the show stopping song and dance numbers on, and this movie has a couple of Astaire's most famous, including one number in which Astaire transforms an inanimate hat rack into a lively dance partner and another in which Astaire seems to defy gravity as he dances on the ceiling and walls of his hotel room. There's also a funny scene in which Astaire and Powell attempt to perform on the tilting stage of an ocean liner, slipping and sliding and watching props fly by.

Watching the movie is worth it for these scenes alone, though the non-dancing climax is also memorable as Astaire and the rest of the cast are intercut with what appears to be actual footage of the famous royal wedding as they chase each other to the alter.

There's also a memorable supporting cast including Keenan Wynn in a dual role as both an American and British theater agent, playing against himself in a couple comedic scenes. My favorite supporting player, however, was Albert Sharpe as Churchill's father, who owns a pub in London and laments his separation from his wife. This is just a subplot, but Sharpe is so great in his little bits of screen time, I fell in love with him. The way Astaire and Sharpe form a supportive little friendship was genuinely touching, even more touching than the central romantic relationships.

The films of Fred Astaire look and feel deceptively like shallow fluff, but they're more than that. The expression of character, story and emotion through these insanely complicated dance numbers is something that is uniquely cinematic, and like the best art, it is able to articulate the intangible stuff of humanity more exactly in an abstract way than it could ever be expressed in a literal way.

One note for AVphiles -- apparently MGM let ROYAL WEDDING slide into the public domain, so it is widely available in lots of different bargain basement releases. Because of this, the source material for these releases isn't always the best. I watched it on the "watch instantly" feature on Netflix, and it was a shitty print, so I'm assuming this must be from one of these small-time releases. It's my understanding there is a good release available from Warner, so if you want to watch the movie, I recommend seeking this out.

Sadie Says:

Since the last Romancefest, there has indeed been a royal wedding in England, so it only seemed appropriate to watch ROYAL WEDDING! I originally discovered and purchased my copy of this movie for around 99 cents at a Rite Aid somewhere in Los Angeles (thank you public domain). It was probably after 2:00 in the morning, I probably also got some sour patch kids, and I can only assume some cheap wet & wild nail polish. I remember being really surprised to find that this classic gem contained the famous Astaire dancing on the walls and ceiling number "You're All The World To Me."

The number is still amazing and really does make you wonder how they did that? After looking it up a few years ago, I found out that MGM built the set inside a revolving steel barrel and mounted the camera and operator to the floor so they would rotate along with the room. It's a technique that has since been repeated and still used to today in film, music video, TV, you name it.

The other numbers aren't half bad either. Lots of singing, lots of dancing, a trip to Haiti, some brother/sister dynamic duo action (a story that echoes Astaire's ascent into show business), and lots of real footage of Queen Elizabeth's Royal Wedding. Clearly this fascination with Royal Weddings has been around for a lot longer than Wills and Kate, and ROYAL WEDDING is the perfect place to see the mayhem first hand.