“Seeing Top Hat for the first time in the early fifties was like seeing a film made in ancient Egypt. It had stylization on top of stylization. The plot and settings and manners and clothes established one level of artifice, and balanced on top of that were perfect cut-glass flowerings of dance and song that rose to infinite heights.... Of all the Astaire-Rogers films Top Hat and Swing Time come closest to the level of the magnificent numbers they contain.... Top Hat gives us Astaire in the best role ever written for a dancer in a movie; the dance technique is an element in the characterization.” --Arlene Croce