The rotat­ing movie set is a great exam­ple of how moviemak­ers can cre­ate cin­e­ma mag­ic. An ordi­nary stage is sus­pend­ed with­in a steel gim­bal, like a box wedged into a wash­ing machine drum, and then amaz­ing effects can be achieved, where­by actors can be shown to appear to defy grav­i­ty. This has been use­ful for hor­ror movie mak­ers (Jeff Gold­blum lurk­ing on the ceil­ing in The Fly; JoBeth Williams being para­nor­mal­ly rolled up the wall to the ceil­ing in Pol­ter­geist; Aman­da Wyss in the dream sequence from Night­mare on Elm Street…) and the tech­nique was also impres­sive­ly employed by Stan­ley Kubrik in a remark­able scene from sci-fi clas­sic 2001: A Space Odyssey. In this scene, a crew mem­ber is shown run­ning around the hub of the space­craft, its rota­tion pro­vid­ing arti­fi­cial grav­i­ty for his exer­cise; in real­i­ty, he is essen­tial­ly run­ning on the spot with the entire set rotat­ing beneath his feet. Here’s a brief clip:

Back in 1951, how­ev­er, direc­tor Stan­ley Donen used the tech­nique to superb effect in musi­cal com­e­dy, in the MGM movie Roy­al Wed­ding, which show­cased the tal­ents of the suave Fred Astaire. Astaire had already retired once, back in 1946, before being lured back into the movie busi­ness to replace the injured Gene Kel­ly in East­er Parade (1948). Roy­al Wed­ding is set in Lon­don at the time of the wed­ding of Princess Eliz­a­beth and Philip Mount­bat­ten, and fea­tures songs by Bur­ton Lane and Alan Jay Lern­er; how­ev­er, it was of course the dance rou­tines that make it stand out.

In one of his solos, You’re All the World to Me, Astaire dances on the walls and ceil­ings of his room (long before Lionel Richie scored a hit with that con­cept!). The idea had actu­al­ly occurred to Astaire him­self, years before, so it must have been par­tic­u­lar­ly reward­ing for him to per­fect this clever illu­sion. Let’s check out the scene both as seen by the movie audi­ence, along­side the “how it’s done” ver­sion.