Is Fantasy Fluff?

Top Hat takes place in a fantasy world.  All people are wealthy, dress impeccably (often in "top hat and tails") and stay in luxurious hotels with impossibly large rooms.  The characters can impetuously buy all the roses in a hotel or jet down to Italy in a moments notice.  The sets in the film are also artificial reconstructions of a Europe of the imagination (not unlike Epcot Center in Disney World).  Venice has canals alright -- but they are more swimming pool than navigation channel.  The buildings are all modern Art Deco hotels without a church or museum in sight.  Add to that that the genre of the musical is perhaps the most unrealistic one since most people don't spontaneously break out into song.  So is this film just entertaining or is there a bigger message amidst all the fakery?  What does it tell us about love and illusion?  What does it tell us about the American Dream in the midst of the Depression?  Is this movie a fluff piece or is it telling us something about the contrast between fantasy and reality?

Innocents Abroad?

In Top Hat the American dancer Jerry Travers and the American socialite Dale Tremont waltz and fall in the love in the European cities of London and Venice.  Along the way they meet Europeans embodied in the members of the stuffy Enlgish social club, Beddini, the Italian fashion designer, Bates the valet, hotel clerks in both cities, and even an Italian carabinieri that arrests Bates (Horace Hardwick, Jerry's producer, is played by an American actor but he could be English). The settings are European, but the actual sets reveal an idealized version of Europe.   What does this film tell us about Americans views of Europeans?  What do Americans think of themselves? How do Americans view themselves on the world's stage?

I'm in Heaven

Top Hat tells the story of the whirlwind romance of Jerry Travers and Dale Tremont.  They meet, flirt, misunderstand each other, fall in love, fall out favor and eventually decide to marry, all the while singing and dancing.  What is this film telling us about love and romance?  Does "the course of true love never did run smooth"? What is it based on?  What is the role of communication and (mis)understanding?  What about the marriage of Horace and Madge: is that a failed relationship -- or just another stage?  Are Jerry and Dale really in heaven -- or is it all an illusion?

A Little Bird Told Me . . .

The gossip of the members of his community about his demotion, rather than the demotion itself, is the direct cause of the doorman's downfall in The Last Laugh.  Some of the most expressive images in the film demonstrate the spread of gossip and the resultant mockery of the neighbors: the camera moves to an outstretched ear, the camera follows the doorman along a walk of shame, grotesque and blurry heads superimposed on the neighborhood mock him with unabashed laughter.  What is the movie saying about gossip as a form of communication?  What is it saying about the community that listens to it?  How does what other people think of us influence how we think of ourselves?

Shiny, Happy People

The concluding scene of The Last Laugh depicts the incredible gluttony and generosity of the unnamed, demoted doorman after he miraculously inherits a fortune from a dying American millionaire. He feasts on mounds of food, eating caviar as if it were candy and drinking champagne as if it were water. A tracking shot of the "spread" emphasizes the opulence and indulgence of our hero. What is the point of this ending? Is is a happy ending or a parody of a happy ending? Is this supposed to be objective reality or a fantasy? Is this a cynical commercial ploy or is there deeper significance to the ending?

Tragedy of the Common Man?

When the unnamed doorman in The Last Laugh is demoted to bathroom attendant, his world collapses. At the end of the film he is estranged from his family, fellow workers and neighbors and only the night watchman gives him succor. Is this film a tragedy in the Aristotelian sense (that is, does he fall because of some tragic character flaw?)? Is it an indictment of the society of the time? A study of the inevitable effects of aging? Or, to put the point another way, whose fault is the doorman's downfall?