Carnival in Costa Rica

This 20th Century Fox musical has several problems, including an uneven script and uninspired choreography. However, the flaws are countered with some strengths. The color photography and costumes are lovely. And the cast is good, especially leading lady Vera-Ellen and Celeste Holm.

I saw this movie in 1947 when it first was released. Mainly because I was a young dance student at that time and I wanted to see the great Leonide Massine, famous because of his discovery by Serge Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe. He replaced the great Vaslav Nijinsky. He appeared in this film during his latter years, but even so you can see what a great dancer he was.

Unfortunately, the producers of this film did not really understand or appreciate his fame and greatness, or give him proper credit. He could have been just another studio dancer. Vera Ellen had a hard time keeping up with him during their only dance sequence.

Interesting that Massine, who came from Moscow and was a Russian trained in the Russina ballet, became such a wonderful Spanish dancer.

This seems to have been his forte and shows well in this film. A pity that I was too young to ever have seen him on the stage. But his choreography is continually revived by ballet companies the world over.

Mixture of the new Latin appreciation with the old Hollywood guard results in stilted musical from Fox. Vera-Ellen, who ricochets around the dance floor while never losing her smile, plays a young lass down South American way who changes her mind about an arranged marriage to Cesar Romero. She loves creepy, corn-fed Dick Haymes instead, while Cesar is currently squiring New York gal Celeste Holm around Costa Rica. The weirdest casting must be rigid-backed Anne Revere as Vera-Ellen's mother, who hovers over her daughter like a clucking goose yet doesn't even recognize her own child when she sees her on a parade float. The production is well-dressed--and blessedly gets outside of the studio on several occasions--but the music score seems built around one monotonously cheerful tune, and Romero comes off like a Latin Don Ameche: whipped and all wet. *1/2 from ****

This is good to watch if only for Vera-Ellen, Celeste Holme, Ceasar Romero, J. Carrol Naish, Anne Revere, and especially, the great crooner Dick Haymes who had a marvelous voice and wasn't a bad actor either.....only the material was schlocky in this one. I would recommend Costa Rica use this for tourism!

Cesar was 40 when this movie was made, at least a decade and a half older than the character should be for an arranged marriage. It appears they tried to hide his age via makeup and hair dye, but these ruses are as convincing as happy, dirt-free coffee-pickers singing their way through a day of hot drudgery. Having said that, this movie, seen in January 2007 on the Fox Movie Channel, is surprisingly watchable. The costumes and dancing and songs are easy on the eyes. Cesar may be too old to play a young buck dealing with parents trying to arrange a marriage, but he is still the great Cesar Romero, of later fame as "The Joker" on Batman.