Country: US
Director: Mark Sandrich
"Every once in a while I suddenly find myself dancing," Jerry Travers (Fred Astaire) says to Dale Tremont (Ginger Rogers) when they meet cute at a London hotel at the beginning of Top Hat. Jerry, a song-and-dance man, has just arrived in London to star in a show for his producer pal Horace Hardwick (Edward Everett Horton) and has been explaining to Horace his casual philosophy of romance. How else would Fred Astaire express his feelings in a musical film but through song and dance? Here the song is "No Strings (I'm Fancy Free)"—"No ties to my affections / I'm fancy free and free for anything fa-a-a-ncy"—and the dance is a raucous tap routine that has disturbed the sleep of the young woman in the room below, Dale. This is why Jerry feels the need to explain to her his occasional compulsion to sing and dance. At this first meeting, Dale responds to Jerry frostily. He responds to her with a level of interest that has him rethinking his no strings attitude to romance.
