One night, last week I needed a comfort movie- for me that would involve a predictable, innocent love story from the old Hollywood and probably entail some singing and dancing. I wanted something delightful and light. I realized I had never seen a Fred Astaire movie all the way through and so it was settled. I watched Royal Wedding (1951) starring Fred Astaire and Jane Powell. Astaire and Powell play brother sister with a dance act who moves their show to London during for the royal wedding. Obviously, they each meet a special someone and as reluctant as they are to settling down they change their ways.
My favorite part of the movie would be the famous scene when Fred Astaire dances on the ceiling. I thought it was great fun and quite a remarkable feat for cinema in the 1950s. I was extremely curious about how they constructed the set. Basically they had the room inside a wheel, the wheel would rotate rather quickly about 90 degrees just as Astaire was jumping onto the wall for example. The camera would be attached to the set so it really did look like he was upside down and dancing on the ceiling. It is a technique of creating zero gravity.
This technique has been used again in several other movies, like in Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film, Inception. The film Royal Wedding was an absolute treat and quenched my thirst for a classic romantic Hollywood film.
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