) e.g. in The Love Parade, Love Me Tonight and One Hour With You. In the climate created by the tightening of censorship the Astaire--Rogers classics made at RKO disguise the sexual energy that drives the plot behind a mask of courtship battles (sex as battle). Sexual energy is sublimated onto the process of courtship through the energy, repartee and adversary relationships associated with battle. The progression of the Astaire--Rogers musicals depends on the simultaneous growth of their quarrelling and of their love. This ambiguous growth of the relationship is expressed through dance. The pattern of the initial contact--challenge dance, in the eight Astaire--Rogers RKO musicals, is epitomised by Top Hat (the fourth) and then modified with greater emphasis on adversary numbers with their quarrelsome, ironic tone in the last four films including Swing Time (the sixth). This quarrelsome tone has a counterpart in thirties screwball comedy e.g. It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby. Astaire's tendency to channel all virulent emotions into rhythm and art compares with Cary Grant's displacement from the physical to the verbal and from overt sexuality to symbolic spats with Katharine Hepburn. The Love Parade (1929), (VHS package) - A10699961 The Gay Divorcee (1934) - A12036137 Top Hat (1935) - A10672508; (VHS package) A12036161 Swing Time (1936) - A10001204; (VHS package) A12038172 Ziegfield Follies (1946), (VHS package) - A1203620X The Pirate (1947) - A1203651X Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1948) - A12004162The Show Musical Along with operetta and musical comedy, the revue provided a theatrical source for the development of the Hollywood musical. Ziegfield Follies (1946), a throwback to the revue films of the late twenties and thirties, demonstrates the limitations of the revue format. While some individual segments (e.g. `Limehouse Blues') are stylistic high points in the genre, they seem to be adrift, denied the balance between story and mus...
