CARNIVAL IN COSTA RICA

US, 1947, 97 minutes, Colour.
Celeste Holm, Dick Haymes, Cesar Romero, Vera- Ellen, Anne Revere, J.Carroll Naish.
Directed by Gregory Ratoff.

Carnival in Costa Rica is one of many musicals made at 20th. Century Fox during the '40s capitalising on the musical stars. There were many film with an emphasis on Latin America from Down Argentine Way to The Gang's All Here. Directors like Irving Cummings and Busby Berkeley made several of the films. This one was directed, perhaps a bit more sombrely, by actor-director Gregory Ratoff (Intermezzo and The Oscar Wilde Story).

The plot is negligible - arranged marriages in Costa Rica and the importance of true love. There are the usual bland Americans (Dick Haymes, Celeste Holm) and the caddish Latin-American?, Cesar Romero, and the attractive heroine - Vera Ellen. Even the blend is in her parents' marriage with Anne Revere (yet another kindly mother role (Song of Bernadette, National Velvet) and an exuberant J. Carroll Naish.

The songs are pleasant and negligible but the film offers an opportunity to see the earlier dancing of Vera Ellen. She had starred with Danny Kaye in Wonder Man and appeared in Three Little Girls in Blue with Betty Grable and June Haver. She was soon to move to M.G.M. and some excellent films with Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, including on The Town, The Belle of New York.

The film illustrates the type of entertainment from 20th Century Fox in the post-war years - colour, glamour, romance in a never-never land (a travelogue and sentimental picture of Costa Rica).