Fred Astaire, who died this week at the age of 88, was certainly a star, though he was not, perhaps, a movie star–not in the way John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, or James Stewart were.
Where the art of those actors depended in some way on the medium of film
–to acquire an intimacy, a physical presence, an unspoken understanding with an audience–Astaire`s art gained little from the movies. He gave the impression that he could get along perfectly well without them, and often enough, he did, finding an independent success in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in television. (Hollywood, early on, seemed to return his indifference. A studio talent scout, according to legend, once dismissed Astaire with a memo that read: ”No screen personality. Can`t act. Can`t sing. Balding. Dances a little.”)
Astaire`s was not an intimate art. He functioned only adequately in close-ups, where his unconventional, infant`s face–round, bald, big eyed
–could register only the broadest of emotions.
He was, instead, a long-shot performer, coming alive on screen most brilliantly only when the camera drew back far enough to register his entire figure, as well as to embrace a considerable space around him. Astaire never was content with the limits delineated by the camera, but always insisted on creating his own playing area, his own room to move.
He did so, quite literally, in his films of the `30s, taking over the responsibility for shooting his own dance numbers as soon as he had acquired sufficient star power.
In ”Flying Down to Rio,” his first RKO feature (1933), he was still at the mercy of the bizarrely angled, Busby Berkeley-style set-ups of his director, Thornton Freeland. But by the time of ”Top Hat” (1935) his authority as a filmmaker had developed to the point where his dance sequences, developed with choreographer Hermes Pan, detach cleanly from the body of Mark Sandrich`s mediocre direction, spinning off into a distinctive directness, clarity and strength of line.
The beauty of Astaire`s dance movements is echoed by the beauty of his camera work, as the frame drifts gently from side to side, following Astaire`s lead without cramping him, presenting as much as possible the shape of his gestures in single, continuous takes. There are no interruptions for emphatic, flattering insert shots of particularly complicated moves, no intrusive close- ups to underline the emotional content of the performance. Everything is expressed in the total dance movement, everything is seen whole.
You need only to remember how Astaire`s contemporary, the tap-dancer Ruby Keeler, was filmed to realize how radical Astaire`s approach was: Each one of Keeler`s ”virtuoso” steps was filmed in a tight, finger-pointing close up, to demonstrate how difficult it was; each close-up of clumping feet would be followed by a close-up of Keeler`s tightly concentrated face, designed to register every ounce of effort the performance required.
Astaire, a vastly more talented performer, could afford to do without such applause-begging tricks. But at the same time, Keeler`s style brought her close to the audience in ways Astaire could never dream of, forcing us to root for the little trooper as she danced her heart out for our entertainment. Astaire, enclosed in his own perfection, was remote, inaccessible: an object of awe rather than affection.
Astaire often seemed to be passing through the movies, just as he seemed to be passing through his individual films. He could not be fixed down: He could not belong to the medium any more than he could belong to the inane, mistaken-identity plots that served as the vague basis of many of his RKO films. His casualness–an impression he worked, of course, very hard to create –could belie a coolness, and the folksy unpretentiousness of his screen character could belie a shyness and self-containment. If he cared little for social convention–which was the message of his top hat and tails, using the most formal and constraining attire to set off the complete freedom of his movements–the implication existed that he cared little for society.
The early pairing with Ginger Rogers–the screen`s most cunning proletarian, the shopgirl forever in search of a millionaire–may well have worked because of the pragmatic, nuts-and-bolts balance it brought to Astaire`s other-worldliness. If anyone could capture and hold this ethereal being, it was certainly the no-nonsense Rogers. But for Astaire, one imagines, the compromise to his freedom eventually became too much to bear; the last of their RKO pairings, the 1939 ”Story of Vernon and Irene Castle,” ends with Astaire as a literal phantom, a ghost spinning off to the world beyond.
There were other partners, some of whom seemed to exist on Astaire`s same plane and who could share with him his remoteness: the impossibly beautiful Rita Hayworth in ”You`ll Never Get Rich” (1941) and ”You Were Never Lovelier” (1942), giving herself up to Astaire`s distant dreaminess; the small, fragile Audrey Hepburn in ”Funny Face” (1957), who seems to become even lighter as Astaire draws her into his lyrical world.
In between, there was Lucille Bremer, Astaire`s partner in ”Ziegfeld Follies” (1946) and the regrettably little-known ”Yolanda and the Thief”
(1945), who could match his coolness and precision to a degree that seemed to intimidate Astaire himself. In any case, after Rogers, he never again appeared on film with the same partner more than twice.
With the coming of World War II, and the passing of popular song from the lyrical style of Gershwin, Berlin, and Porter (each of whom composed for Astaire) to the more physical beat of the swing bands and bebop, Astaire`s popularity waned. He even announced his retirement in 1945, only to return three years later–an unreformed workaholic–to co-star with Judy Garland in
”Easter Parade.”
But this post-war Astaire was a different Astaire, less eager to assert his individuality and independence, more willing to place himself in the service of his directors` visions.
For Stanley Donen, with whom he made ”Royal Wedding” (1951) and ”Funny Face” (1957), he became a sort of white magician, possessed of the unconscious power to transcend space (in ”Royal Wedding,” he dances on the walls and ceiling of his hotel room) and transform character (as the fashion photographer of ”Funny Face,” he presides over Audrey Hepburn`s rebirth as a beautiful model) through the sheer force of his exuberant personality.
For Vincente Minnelli, his director in ”Ziegfeld Follies,” ”Yolanda and the Thief” and ”The Band Wagon,” Astaire became a melancholy, almost tragic figure, haunted by dark desires, a shady past, or the specter of personal failure, who could be saved only through the intervention of the most pure romantic love. ”The Band Wagon” (1953) is thinly veiled autobiography, the story of a washed-up movie star attempting a Broadway comeback (the film begins with Astaire`s top hat and cane being sold at auction–for a very low price). If the distant, eternally driven Astaire ever allowed his private demons to surface, it is in this film, one of the most emotionally complex musicals ever made.
Astaire`s last dancing appearance was in Francis Coppola`s ungainly
”Finian`s Rainbow” of 1968, though he did gamely execute a few steps with Gene Kelly in ”That`s Entertainment, Part 2” in 1976. For the most part, his late career took place in the private hell Hollywood reserves for aging greats –playing lovable codgers in made-for-TV movies. Driven to the last, Astaire did not discreetly withdraw–as his fellow icon of elegance, Cary Grant, wisely did–and perhaps his familiarity these past few years, in such unworthy vehicles as ”The Amazing Dobermans” and ”Ghost Story,” has damaged his myth. But those movies will fade soon enough, leaving us with the image of a flying gentleman in tails–suspended in space, in time, and in his own world.
