Astaire and Rogers were at their peak here, creatively and financially - yet RKO didn't feel confident giving them the whole movie - so a great slab of this is taken up with a romance between Randolph Scott and Harriet Hilliard. To be fair, the filmmakers probably had the tremendous success of Roberta in mind - that spent a lot of time on a Randolph Scott romance as well.
Not that it makes it any more interesting: this has a whole bunch of plot about Hilliard (who is a bit of a charisma free zone - she became Harriet Nelson) being an ugly duckling who blossoms into a swan and Scott not noticing and blah blah blah. Fred and Ginger's own romance is, once again, relatively stress free although there is a bunch of misunderstandings about a Broadway show.
They do have some squabbles and superb dancing, which achieve genuine art status. You get a real range of them - "Let Yourself Go", which starts in a comic fashion but builds in intensity (I love it how Ginger matches him leap for leap - Fred is clearly a genius but she's in there, going for it, never letting him beat her); the dramatic intensity of the climactic "Let's Face the Music and Dance", Ginger's solo (her only one in these films), Fred's solo, Fred playing the piano.
The film could have done with a genuine comic actor or two in there - the equivalent of Edward Everett Horton.
No comments:
Post a Comment