Director: Mark Sandrich
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
Top Billed Actors: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Alice Brady
Won 1 Oscar:
Best Song - Con Conrad and Herb Magidson ("The Continental")
Nominated for 4 more:
Outstanding Production - RKO Radio
Best Scoring - RKO Radio Studio Music Department
Best Sound Recording - Carl Dreher
Best Art Direction - Van Nest Polglase and Carroll Clark
Plot: A dancer pursues a married woman who wants to be a divorcee and they dance together while also hanging out with an Italian man.
Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
Top Billed Actors: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Alice Brady
Won 1 Oscar:
Best Song - Con Conrad and Herb Magidson ("The Continental")
Nominated for 4 more:
Outstanding Production - RKO Radio
Best Scoring - RKO Radio Studio Music Department
Best Sound Recording - Carl Dreher
Best Art Direction - Van Nest Polglase and Carroll Clark
Plot: A dancer pursues a married woman who wants to be a divorcee and they dance together while also hanging out with an Italian man.
Out of the ten Fred Astaire-Ginger Roger dancing team-up films, there are only two that appear in this project. The Gay Divorcee (1934), which is the second of them overall, was sort of a breakthrough for the pair. Astaire initially didn't want to do a partnership feature. He performed for a while with his sister and had some success with Rogers in their first production, Flying Down to Rio (1933) so he wanted to branch out and try to be a star on his own. He was persuaded to do this due to the success of Flying Down to Rio and he starred with Rogers eight more times after. This film is also the very first winner of the Best Original Song Oscar. "The Continental" is a lavish dancing sequence that lasts nearly twenty minutes. I admittedly haven't heard the other nominees in the category but it is good to see the modern Awards start to accumulate in the first decade of the Oscars.
The movie itself does what it is meant to do. It fits squarely into the comical romantic musical genre. As a result, there are some funny moments, some shining musical moments, and some rather dull romantic moments. The jokes are rather dated but I still found myself laughing a great deal at the Italian character played by Erik Rhodes and the British waiter played by Eric Blore. Their repeated antics give the movie a great infuse of comic relief between the swooning scenes when Astaire is hitting on Rogers. The songs are hit or miss with me. I really enjoyed the Award winner, "The Continental" and the choreography involved in the whole sequence.
Although I enjoyed that particular sequence of dancing, there is entirely too much of it for my taste. Astaire is primarily a dancer so the movie knows how to feature this, but it gets rather boring after the fourth or fifth routine. The story is also uninteresting. Astaire falls in love with a stranger, Rogers, and she wants to get a divorce. She hires a co-respondent and mistakes Astaire for the hired man and they have a musical filled night at a hotel. The only moment that captured my attention is when the viewer is the only one who knows Astaire is not the co-respondent and Rogers thinks he is. She keeps accusing him of having a shameful profession and he keeps getting confused. But the rest of the narrative is really an excuse for the songs and dance.
Overall, there isn't much to the movie except for the historic pairing of Astaire and Rogers. The humor from certain characters and the first Original Song winner highlights this standard 1930's musical fare.
My Score: 6/10
The movie itself does what it is meant to do. It fits squarely into the comical romantic musical genre. As a result, there are some funny moments, some shining musical moments, and some rather dull romantic moments. The jokes are rather dated but I still found myself laughing a great deal at the Italian character played by Erik Rhodes and the British waiter played by Eric Blore. Their repeated antics give the movie a great infuse of comic relief between the swooning scenes when Astaire is hitting on Rogers. The songs are hit or miss with me. I really enjoyed the Award winner, "The Continental" and the choreography involved in the whole sequence.
Although I enjoyed that particular sequence of dancing, there is entirely too much of it for my taste. Astaire is primarily a dancer so the movie knows how to feature this, but it gets rather boring after the fourth or fifth routine. The story is also uninteresting. Astaire falls in love with a stranger, Rogers, and she wants to get a divorce. She hires a co-respondent and mistakes Astaire for the hired man and they have a musical filled night at a hotel. The only moment that captured my attention is when the viewer is the only one who knows Astaire is not the co-respondent and Rogers thinks he is. She keeps accusing him of having a shameful profession and he keeps getting confused. But the rest of the narrative is really an excuse for the songs and dance.
Overall, there isn't much to the movie except for the historic pairing of Astaire and Rogers. The humor from certain characters and the first Original Song winner highlights this standard 1930's musical fare.
My Score: 6/10