Fred Astaire (Frederick Austerlitz)

Fred Astaire (Frederick Austerlitz) (1899-1987), b. Omaha, Nebraska There is something very suggestive of Americana in the way a Napoleonic battle is turned into a name without roots or etymology. Vet how evocative that name is; run the parts together and the result is as rhythmic as Fre-nesi; separate them and it could be Fred a Star or Fred on a staircase, astride the stair— thus Astaire, /'esprit d'escaiier.
It is proper to respond in this way because so much of Astaire is a matter of stylish carriage, and I do not think it accidental that the name evokes some specially serene agility. This leads to the questions, is Astaire a movie actor? and what makes for great acting in the cinema? There is a good case for arguing that, in the event of a visit by creatures from a far universe, ignorant of the cinema, one would do best to show them some steps by Astaire as the clinching evidence of the medium's potential. Better that than the noble actors— Olivier, Jannings, Brando, Barrymore, et al. Astaire is the most refined human expression of the musical, which is in turn the extreme manifestation of pure cinema: the lifelike presentation of human beings in magical, dreamlike, and imaginary situations. That might be thought to imply that Astaire's dancing depends on illusion. Not so. He was always the most technically exacting and ambitious of screen dancers, the most eager to perform in uninterrupted setups. In the 1920s, it would have been possible to see him dancing virtuoso routines on stage. The spatial and temporal continuity of theatre would have made clear how difficult the feat was. Cinema wipes away the sense of difficult)' and substitutes the ease that permits every transformation needed by the chronic dreamer. Astaire is not a great dancer so much as a great filmed dancer. Nureyev on film is less than in the

flesh, because he is himself most stimulated by an actual audience and a real leap. Astaire, like al! dreamers, is a perfectionist who loved to work in the feverish secrecy of a studio toward the flawless image of his own grace. He lends himself to the detachment of cinema because he is a rather cold, even indistinct personality who celebrates the spirit of elegance as channeled through elaborate, rapid, photographed motion.
Such a notion was underlined by Astaire's latter-day appearance in "straight" parts. After Silk Stockings, in 1957, he largely gave himself up to television spectaculars and to acting. The first sour fruit of this was On the Beach (59, Stanley Kramer), If anyone had ever doubted Kramer's crassness, here was final proof. For he cast Astaire as a motor-racing driver, a man essentially hidden in the shell of a car. Surely nuclear holocaust could have been as glibly dramatized by Astaire's playing a golfer? Then at least we might have enjoyed his dainty prowling round the greens. Yet once Astaire was asked to partake of earnest melodrama, it was a strain to watch him at all. In play-acting, he is downright shifty: like a philosopher at a bingo session, there is the embarrassing and depleting sense of a man having been caught on the blind side, but gamely trying to be polite. Furthermore, drama blurred his appearance. In On the Beach, he is sometimes disheveled, which is heresy against the perpetual grooming of his characteristic work. This applied as much to Finian's Rainbow (68, Francis Ford Coppola), a respectful and nostalgic tribute to his greatness, as to his other totally mediocre films of the 1960s: The Pleasure of His Company (61, George Seaton); The Notorious Landlady (62, Richard Quine); The Midas Run (69, Alf Kjellin); and The Towering Inferno (74, John Cuillermin).
In musicals, too, Astaire is the man without character; sometimes not so far from the man without humanity. But in the musicals, this is not so much a shortcoming as an audacious emphasis on style. Astaire is preeminently the saint of 1930s sophistication, the butterfly in motion till he dies, whose enchanting light voice kids the sentimentality of his songs. (He is a great singer—no wonder all the songwriters wanted him—who treats the song with reverence.) He is the man about town, empty of personality, opinions, and warmth, but a man who carries himself matchlessly. There is something of the eighteenth-century dandy in his preference for taking nothing seriously, save for the articulation of his superb movement.


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