Even Inland Empire
Flying Down to Rio (1933)
directed by Thornton Freeland
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
watched instantly on Netflix
The heir to some dull fortune chooses to be a band leader instead, palling around America with Fred Astaire and the "Yankee Clippers." When not in front of a microphone, our hero flies airplanes and keeps a piano inside the cockpit in the event of inspiration. Because of his involvement with the female guests who show up to dance, Roger Bond - nonchalance intact - gets his company kicked out of every Coconut Grove from Los Angeles to Miami, and they're forced to try their luck in sunny Rio de Janeiro.
Not a bad life, and although Flying to Rio is best remembered as the first time Fred Astaire asked Ginger Rogers for a number, my money is on the slow introduction to the song they share, with Brazilian musicians trickling in one instrument at a time. Merian C. Cooper, in addition to serving in the Polish Air Force and on the first Board of Directors at Pan Am, underwrote Rio at RKO in part because he wanted to put pretty girls on the wings of biplanes and watch them dance in the clouds. There are some amazing sets - a brass band suspended above the dance floor as if from a hot air balloon, or six pianos arranged like a pinwheel played over a rotating floor while Astaire and Rogers dance on top in the opposite direction - but nothings beats the air-devil sequence for excess and glee.
At one point, Astaire is literally framed by the breasts of one extra and the thigh of another, and it struck me that this, at last, was the first great Barry Hannah adaptation. It's the spirit of the thing, way back when: slurred speech and lovers who parachute out of floatplanes to give their women the freedom they deserve. "Is she saying she wants me so much she'd pay for a plane to my yard? Or is she saying: Look at this, I never gave a damn for anything but fun in the air?"
directed by Thornton Freeland
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
watched instantly on Netflix
The heir to some dull fortune chooses to be a band leader instead, palling around America with Fred Astaire and the "Yankee Clippers." When not in front of a microphone, our hero flies airplanes and keeps a piano inside the cockpit in the event of inspiration. Because of his involvement with the female guests who show up to dance, Roger Bond - nonchalance intact - gets his company kicked out of every Coconut Grove from Los Angeles to Miami, and they're forced to try their luck in sunny Rio de Janeiro.
Not a bad life, and although Flying to Rio is best remembered as the first time Fred Astaire asked Ginger Rogers for a number, my money is on the slow introduction to the song they share, with Brazilian musicians trickling in one instrument at a time. Merian C. Cooper, in addition to serving in the Polish Air Force and on the first Board of Directors at Pan Am, underwrote Rio at RKO in part because he wanted to put pretty girls on the wings of biplanes and watch them dance in the clouds. There are some amazing sets - a brass band suspended above the dance floor as if from a hot air balloon, or six pianos arranged like a pinwheel played over a rotating floor while Astaire and Rogers dance on top in the opposite direction - but nothings beats the air-devil sequence for excess and glee.
At one point, Astaire is literally framed by the breasts of one extra and the thigh of another, and it struck me that this, at last, was the first great Barry Hannah adaptation. It's the spirit of the thing, way back when: slurred speech and lovers who parachute out of floatplanes to give their women the freedom they deserve. "Is she saying she wants me so much she'd pay for a plane to my yard? Or is she saying: Look at this, I never gave a damn for anything but fun in the air?"
posted by NPK at 12:15 AM
<< Home