The Sky's the Limit

Another of the many World War Two films which was intended to demonstrate that everyone had to answer the call to duty, even the wealthy. This one contains characters who find themselves in glamorous places with clever lines and works of classical art. They are into champagne and penthouses, and mandatory dance scenes on ballroom size terraces. There is, and can be, only one star in this film: Fred Astaire. The finest part is his song and dance routine, "One For The Road." This scene is a classic movie moment of which one never tires. When it comes to dancing, the sky is indeed the limit.

This is a romantic comedy on the surface, and it's not a bad one at all, with sharp dialogue, surprising transitions where the characters switch from being the cat to being the mouse and vice-versa, and dancing and music and fun and silliness.

I also found it surprisingly poignant. It covers a lot of the same ground as films from the same period like "The Clock" and "Since You Went Away" - a compressed courtship between a soldier and a civilian, where they have a very short time between meeting as strangers and the soldier going off to war. These films (which aren't just Hollywood fantasies, they would have been happening to millions of people in real life) have two sources of dramatic uncertainty - firstly the uncertainty about whether they're really getting to know each other or they're just on an emotional roller coaster; and secondly the uncertainty about whether it's fair to get married and run the risk of the civilian being left a widow or spending the rest of her life looking after a severely injured husband. These issues aren't explicitly discussed in "The Sky's the Limit", which is still a romantic comedy, but they're alluded to sufficiently clearly that a contemporary audience would have understood that Astaire's character was very confused, unsure about whether to hit the accelerator or the brake, and wound up enough that he could have gotten drunk and smashed up a bar.

Another striking scene in the movie was a comment Astaire's character made about how one might go to war not for any grand cause but to preserve one's freedom to be a slacker. He was behaving consistently with that declaration in (at least initially) wanting to spend a few days out of uniform, joking around and having fun with a pretty girl. There are questions about whether an actual WW2 fighter pilot on leave would behave that way - I don't know, within the film, I find it plausible enough for suspension of disbelief, and if nothing else it's a nice way of inserting a "why we fight" message about the United States not being a nation of full-time uniformed soldiers, but of civilians who occasionally put on a uniform to defend life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Very few people have heard of it, but this is really one of my favorite Fred Astaire movies. In part because Fred does one of the best angry dance scenes that I've ever seen. He stumbles drunken, singing One More for my Baby, and smashes glass with his feet. He sways to the rhythm and leaps up on the metal bar to tap smash shattering glass. If you're lucky enough to see this movie keep in mind, that's real glass, not sugar glass like you normally see in movies. This was during WWII and sugar was rationed. Fred and Joan Leslie have a number of lovely romantic dance scenes. The background plot of WWII provides, well, a plot. By turns funny and bittersweet, a great dance movie.

Very much in the Fred Astaire canon of the 30's-40's (Fred meets girl, Fred exasperates girl, Fred wins girl over on the dance floor), THE SKY'S THE LIMIT - although uneven - contains some of Astaire's best and most unusual moments on film. It's worth getting past a few jarring notes to access them.

In almost every one of his musicals, Fred plays some extension of the same character: the lovestruck, earnest but insouciant sophisticate, and for some reason the standard formula required Fred to annoy the object of his affection upon their initial meeting - and often for some time after. This picture frequently carries the gimmick to inexplicable extremes.

The recipient of Fred's love at first sight is magazine photographer Joan Leslie, who although not quite a triple-threat (her singing voice is courtesy of Sally Sweetland, but she could dance and handle both comedy and drama; call her a two-and-a-half threat) is generally up to the task, and projects a maturity far beyond her 18 (yup: 18) years. Supplying able assistance is Robert Benchley as Joan's editor and would-be suitor, who has moments hinting at more depth as an actor than he was usually given an opportunity to display.

With Fred portraying a Flying Tiger ace who skips out on a PR tour to enjoy a few days of fun before returning to duty, there are elements of wartime morale-boosting, but only around the edges, and in what sometimes is an almost subversive vein. After enduring a discourse on "how to win this war" from the man who has given him a lift to town, Astaire's only response is, "What's your classification?" "4-F," the man answers, to which Astaire replies, "That's what I thought."

In an odd bit of casting, Robert Ryan appears as one of Fred's Air Forces buddies, but takes the script's intended mischief a bit too seriously. In scenes that call for him to merely tease, he practically drips with menace. That quality would serve him well in subsequent films, but here it's one of the aforementioned jarring notes.

There's still plenty of fun along the way, and the script is sprinkled with in-jokes, such as references to some of Astaire and Leslie's costars in earlier films, or Benchley's series of celebrated two-reel shorts for MGM in the 30's (Joan tells of a wedding proposal from him that digressed to a lecture about "the sex life of a polyp"). Indeed, Benchley delivers one of his trademark disorganized addresses at a fete honoring an industrialist, and while it brings the story to a halt for a few minutes, you won't really mind if you're a fan.

The crown jewel of THE SKY'S THE LIMIT is one of Astaire's best vocalizations of one of the best songs ever written for him, "One For My Baby (and One More For the Road"), along with one of his most adventurous dance solos, in which a night of bar-hopping after a falling-out with Leslie culminates in an explosive choreographic release of frustration and fury, at the posh nightspot where they first met.

This may not become one of your favorite Astaire pictures, but there are rewards if you can overlook a few rough spots.

This may conceivably be THE most under-rated film of all-time... NO ONE seems to love it as much as I do. Maltin, etc. all consider it one of Fred's worst movies. I don't understand why! He's great, Robert Benchley is on hand (doing one of his best patented befuddled speaker routines), and Joan Leslie is beautiful, sharp, and a great dancer (she really keeps up with Astaire, which is hard to do!) On top of that there are two immortal songs ("My Shining Hour", and "One For My Baby). It's not really a musical though, more of a romantic-comedy. Astaire and Leslie have a wonderful chemistry, especially in their debates over the importance of work in a man's life (Astaire is practically playing a gen-xer here!) Don't listen to the critics, watch this movie, it has biting wit, good music, and will leave you wistfully happy!