This was the last big MGM musical shot in black-and-white, which gives it a kind of autumnal aura and a kind of abstract purity. At its heart is the sublime joy and non-neurotic sexuality of Eleanor Powell's and Fred Astaire's dancing. This was the first and only time they danced together in a film, and two of their tapping pas de deux rank among the greatest passages in all of cinema.
Powell had a self-contained air -- she didn't really need a partner and her great dances were usually solo numbers. Her genius lay in her hard-driving and percussive but still lyrical tapping -- when she tried more balletic stuff she wasn't at all convincing . . . her line became diffused.
Technically, of course, Astaire could match her tap for tap. When they mirror each other's steps, dancing together, something extraordinary happens -- her almost virile energy reveals its essential girlness, and his almost feminine elegance reveals its essential male authority. They create an image of perfect equality between the sexes without losing the idea of sex.
The film's finale culminates in a tap routine to an up-tempo, swung version of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine". It consists of two shots, the first lasting 2 minutes and 12 seconds, the second 31 seconds. It's as powerful an evocation of good sex as movies ever have and ever can achieve -- Powell and Astaire respond to each other's bodies in motion with almost supernatural sensitivity and one can watch their mutual joy grow as they execute the complex choreography perfectly, with only the one cut over the course of nearly three minutes of non-stop virtuosity.
In his introduction to a clip of the dance in "That's Entertainment" Frank Sinatra said, "You can wait around and hope but you'll never see the likes of this again."
But you will, because it's on film, and now on DVD -- and no matter how many times you watch it, it will always be new. It obliterates time.