An unusual Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers collaboration, in that this is a melodramatic biopic about the married ballroom dancers who took American culture by storm in the days leading up to World War I. If joy and liberation bursts from the best Astaire-Rogers films, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle is defined by restriction. They’re restricted by the narrative, which is beholden to hagiography; by the fashion, which slavishly followed Irene Castle’s preferences (she was closely involved in the production); and, mostly, by the choreography, which has Astaire and Rogers recreating the staid ballroom style that they themselves would reinvent about a decade after the Castles’ prime. There is some sweetness to this as a swan song—it would be their penultimate picture together—but mostly it registers as a particularly well-cast piece of self-mythology.
