1h 24min | Comedy, Romance, Musical | 3 January 1941 |
3 December 1940 (New York City, New York) (premiere)
Director: H.C. Potter
Stars: Fred Astaire, Paulette Goddard, Artie Shaw, Charles Butterworth, Burgess Meredith
Hermes Pan ... dance director
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033029/
This was in public domain hell for a long time (I have this in 2 megapacks), then Image Entertainment got some good source material and issued a worthy release.
Very nice to see PG dancing after all those credits as a Goldwyn Girl. Her career popped when Charles Chaplin, her "husband" 6'36-6'42, starred her in Modern Times ('36). She married BM 5'44-5'49, and this is their 1st of 4 pairings, the last in '49. (She had 4 husbands, all writers to some extent. The 4th ('58-'70, his death) was Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front, among others.) PG's other film with Chaplin, The Great Dictator had a limited release in 10'40, then wide in 3'41. Here she shares the pre-title billing card with (same level, to the right of) FA. That's 4 years and only 8 films after MT, and she was still a Goldwyn Girl in the film before MT.
This plot point is aggravating: although FA & BM were supposed friends, roommates and bandmates for 7 years (in college. Problem: they kept flunking to stay. I doubt that worked, even in the 30s.). And yet they seem always contentious. One bought an encyclopedia in the other's name, throwing him into debt. One turned in a terrific term paper for the other, so he wouldn't flunk (remember: he wanted to flunk; BTW, the paper was plagiarized from that encyclopedia.) They play their trumpets over one another, not to complement each other. And then the beautiful, competent, up-beat girl comes along, and they really pit themselves against each other, but then BM trusts FA near the end. Huh?
The dancing is definitely not enough. We get only 1 pairing of FA with PG, and it's not romantic, but it is fun, and the number I remember most. It's the first dance number, and the singing begins almost 15 min into the film. FA has only 2 solos: ~45 min in, lasts less than 1.5 min, in a Russian restaurant in a heavy costume and using Russian-style moves; and ~1:18:30, lasts 3.5 min, dance-conducting the Artie Shaw orchestra for the Poor Mr. Chisholm number. NO ensembles or chorus boys/girls anywhere in the film.
Other than the dances, we get musical interludes from the FA/BM college swing band, Artie Shaw does a nice number with his band, and maybe 5 other tunes, but that includes 2 botched auditions. Artie Shaw himself is a prominent character, but his acting feels like he's wrapped in cellophane. (It's really hard to understand why/how he married 8 times. I get no charm onscreen.) Astaire is the only singer in the film. He's fine; the songs he sings, not so much.
Paramount, dir. Potter; 6+
