FLYING DOWN TO RIO
US, 1933, 89 minutes, Black and white.
Dolores del Rio, Gene Raymond, Raoul Roulien, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Eric Blore.
Directed by Thornton Freeland.
Flying Down to Rio is the first of the Fred Astaire- Ginger Rogers musicals. However, they were not the main stars of this film. Rather the stars were Gene Raymond as a womanising bandleader in Miami who gets sacked and wants to fly down to Rio de Janeiro when his band gets a fixture there. He flirts with a Brazilian guest played by Dolores del Rio (Bird of Paradise, Ramona). However, she is engaged to his best friend played by Raoul Roulien. Amongst those going down to Rio are Honey Hale and Fred Ayres played by Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. They get their first opportunity to dance together – and it is the Carioca, a song which was also Oscar-nominated. From then on they appeared in a number of RKO musicals starting with Top Hat and going to The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, all these in the 1930s. They reunited once for The Barkleys of Broadway in 1949.
The film was directed by Thornton Freeland, director of a number of minor films in Hollywood in the 30s and 40s.
1. An interesting and enjoyable early musical? Its status an a thirties musical, the introduction of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire? How entertaining now? The effect of its feeling dated?
2. Quality of black and white photography, the various editing devices, the trick photography, the stunts?
3. How attractive and enjoyable the music? The long focus on the Carioca numbers and the elaborate choreography? Rogers and Astaire?
4. The typical show business romance plot and conventions? - Roger, the hero, his blandness, his ability to compose, conduct, fly? The ladies' man and his dancing with the heroine, the sack? Relationship with his friends? The night in Haiti? His being too smart in Rio? His willingness to sacrifice the heroine, yet his winning? The picture of a conventional Hollywood thirties film? - Juliet - the counterpart for Roger, his relationship with the heroine, with the hotel, his self-sacrifice? - Berinha - the glamorous wealthy Brazilian heroine, her presence in the New York night clubs, her relationship with her aunt as chaperone, the flight and the night in Haiti, her father and the hotel in Rio, the matrimonial questions and the two suitors, her inability to choose, the happy ending?
5. Fred and Honey: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers together for the first time in comedy routines, wisecracks, everybody's friends? Their dancing? Audience response to the usual romantic entanglements, bands getting the sack, the satire of officious individuals, Rio and hotels, the show, the gangsters?
6. The use of spectacle especially in the Carioca dance number, the Astaire and Rogers dancing, the elaborate presentation of the show on the planes? The film is famous for this - does it merit its fame? How far-fetched, stretching the imagination and credibility, humorous? Spectacular?
7. A piece of Depression Americana illustrating the popular points of view and values of America at the time? The conventional Hollywood film?
