Rated or Dated: Top Hat (1935)

Standard Issue Podcast

Standard Issue

Society & Culture

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Featuring a couple of bona fide bangers by Irving Berlin, this Fred and Ginger bonanza, in which misunderstandings, misidentification and miscommunication slows true love’s flow, was the pair’s most successful film. But will the ‘idiot plot’ be too frustrating for words? Can Mick deal with the sheer amount of tap dancing? Why is Hannah screaming and refusing to look at the screen? And what am “Venice”? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to rated or dated.
0:11.8	I'm Hannah Dunleavy and I'm joined by my colleague Mickey Noonan.
0:15.8	Hello.
0:16.6	Mickey, there's only two of us again.
0:18.5	When shall we three meet again?
0:21.5	Hubble the ball toil and no one knows.
0:25.4	You miss babe, we had a lot of fun watching that.
0:28.1	I love a pig.
0:28.9	I would have enjoyed that.
0:30.6	Yes, so, Mickey,
0:32.5	what film that I was shocked to my very core to discover
0:36.5	wasn't actually filmed in Venice.
0:39.9	Did we watch this week?
0:43.1	This week, we've been tying up our white tie and brushing off our tails
0:47.1	as we watched 1935's Fred and Ginger Art Deco Bonanza Top Hat.
0:53.8	Directed by Mark Sandrich, written by Alan Scott and Dwight Taylor and was songs by Irving Berlin.
0:59.6	It contains some absolute bangers that quickly became and have remained American song classics.
1:06.8	Hannah, had you seen it before?
1:09.5	No, I've never seen a Fred Astaire.
1:11.7	Not true, I've seen The Taring Inferno, but that's not a good example of a Fred Astaire film.
1:17.6	No, I've never seen this, indeed, any of his films before.
1:20.9	Doesn't do much dancing in that.
	...

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