Mark Sandrich
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The Shape of Water (2017)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
influenced by Follow the Fleet (1936)
Visuals
There are strong undercurrents, too, of the silent pathos of Keaton and Chaplin, interspersed with bouts of musical fantasy, including an audacious Fred and Ginger-style routine that mirrors the monochrome dance designs of Follow the Fleet .
The movie lifts into a black-and-white dance number — a brief re-creation of the set and choreography of “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” (from the Astaire-Rogers film “Follow the Fleet”).
Indeed, even if it had only lived up to the memory of all its many references it would be something special — Chazelle nods to the likes of “Top Hat,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” and “An American in Paris,” and more, after all.
While this might not give younger audiences the same kind of thrill as those who applaud films like Top Hat , it may hopefully help broaden their experiences and provide a stepping stone towards those celebrated works.
But any film investor offered a La La Land starring, say, Tony Award winners Sutton Foster and Billy Porter might simply have quoted Fred Astaire in Shall We Dance: "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off!"
Martial arts sequences are akin to dance scenes, and Chow mirrors a poster for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in TOP HAT with a man holding a woman at knifepoint.
This manifests in the first of several mesmerizing sequences of shirtless dance (this one to "Slap That Bass," from the Fred Astaire movie Shall We Dance ), in which Phoenix's sinewy body contorts in twisted rapture.
He is up late at night while his mother sleeps, watching a classic movie on television, “Shall We Dance,” starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
It pulls heavily from The King of Comedy in its narrative and from Taxi Driver (1976) for its protagonist’s modus operandi, and it seeks out a lineage not of other superhero movies, but of the great works of cinema: Fleck watches the Fred Astaire vehicle Shall We Dance (1937) on TV and Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) in a cinema, and the marquee of a theater showing Blow Out is featured prominently.
Unless you are a big Richard Gere fan, Shall We Dance is only moderately entertaining.
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)
Directed by Mark Gustafson
influenced by Top Hat (1935)
Visuals
From its very premise to a musical interlude straight out of a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers pic like Top Hat , this is one of our great dreamers operating with total confidence and freedom.