Swing Time (1936)

Swing Time is a 1936 American musical comedy film, the sixth of ten starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Directed by George Stevens for RKO, it features Helen Broderick, Victor Moore, Betty Furness, Eric Blore and Georges Metaxa, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Dorothy Fields. Set mainly in New York City, the film follows a gambler and dancer, "Lucky" (Astaire), who is trying to raise money to secure his marriage when he meets a dance instructor, Penny (Rogers), and begins dancing with her; the two soon fall in love and are forced to reconcile their feelings.

Noted dance critic Arlene Croce considers Swing Time to be Astaire and Rogers's best dance musical, a view shared by John Mueller and Hannah Hyam. It features four dance routines that are each regarded as masterpieces. According to The Oxford Companion to the American Musical, Swing Time is "a strong candidate for the best of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals". The Oxford Companion says that, although the screenplay is contrived, it "left plenty of room for dance and all of it was superb. ... Although the movie is remembered as one of the great dance musicals, it also boasts one of the best film scores of the 1930s." "Never Gonna Dance" is often singled out as the partnership's and collaborator Hermes Pan's most profound achievement in filmed dance, while "The Way You Look Tonight" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, and Astaire topped the U.S. pop chart with it in 1936. Jerome Kern's score, the first of two that he composed specially for Astaire films, contains three of his most memorable songs.

The film's plot has been criticized, though, as has the performance of Metaxa. More praised is Rogers's acting and dancing performance. Rogers credited much of the film's success to Stevens: "He gave us a certain quality, I think, that made it stand out above the others." Swing Time also marked the beginning of a decline in popularity of the Astaire–Rogers partnership among the general public, with box-office receipts falling faster than usual after a successful opening. Nevertheless, the film was a sizable hit, costing $886,000, grossing over $2,600,000 worldwide, and showing a net profit of $830,000. The partnership never regained the creative heights scaled in this and previous films.

In 1999, Swing Time was listed as one of Entertainment Weekly's top 100 films. In 2004, it was included in the annual selection of 25 motion pictures added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant and recommended for preservation. In AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition), it is ranked at No. 90.