Carioca

Howard Hughes, oh how we needed you.

From other sources you will have learned that this is pretty sexy stuff in terms of transparent clothes; not a bra on the hundreds of candidates. And the original dirty dancing before it was outlawed, and that crack about what Brazilian women have "below the equator." Also, you will have heard about this being the first Astaire-Rogers pairing.

You may not have heard of one of the most racially respectful scenes I know from the era: a couple land on a supposedly deserted island and the woman is frightened by what she thinks are natives. Turns out one comes out of the woods. He's playing golf and while shirtless (in order to make the joke work) speaks English normally and carries himself like a regular man. Its the reverse joke of what you'd usually see in bugeyed stepinfetchits.

But what I find fascinating is the way sex, romance, money and music are all somehow related to aviation. Our hero, we are told is heir to a fortune if only he would give up his music and planes. But it is plain that he does it because of the women. And by that we know he means sex, only sex. We first see him as he climbs out of his plane, which has a piano stuffed in it. Now think about that a minute.

This is what technology meant in those days: adventure, charm, bodily pleasure. And its what the sort of music we see in films was supposed to imply as well. If you do not see this, let me describe the climax. Scores of scantily clad women are strapped to what looks like a dozen small planes to perform choreographically as best you can when bolted down. Every shot you can take of a woman's body is presented, along with a wingload of errant nipples. I can just imagine the smiles when they thought it up.

There's something else to watch for. This has the most elaborate transitions I believe I have seen for any film. They really are amazingly varied and so copious they are as much a feature as Fred's dancing.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

I gave this "Fred Astaire" comedy-romance-musical higher marks than normal because the romance, usually the sappy part of the Astaire films, doesn't dominate as it does most of his movies.

As usual, there are a number of interesting dance scenes including a spectacular Busby Berkeley-type production on the wings of airplanes. That scene has to be seen to be believed, not just for the uniqueness of it but for the bra-less women pictured! Yikes, it's not something you expect to see with a classic film - and you wouldn't see for another 35 years. It's pretty amazing.

I really shouldn't label this an "Astaire film " because Dolores Del Rio and Gene Raymond are the two stars. Astaire is a close third. Raul Roulien would be next while Ginger Rogers just has a small role.....but it IS noteworthy for being the first time all of us saw the famous Astaire-Rogers pairing.

The comedy in this film also is pretty good. The best parts of the film are the beginning and end. The fadeout segways in here reminded of silent films, which weren't that long removed from this.

By the time Flying Down to Rio was released in 1933, It was Warner Brothers who had been having the success as far as musicals were concerned.

Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell were the uncrowned King and Queen of song and dance land and in films like 42nd Street, Footlight Parade and Gold Diggers and the later movies Dames and Flirtation Walk they were paving the way for a motion picture genre that would continue in much the same vein for the next twenty years.

With kaleidescope routines expertly directed by Busby Berkeley via overhead cameras, the movie musical was finally taking shape bearing little or no resemblance to earlier dismal efforts like MGM'S Broadway Melody of 1929 or their equally unimpressive Hollywood Review from the same year.

RKO was at the time a struggling studio with huge debts and was on the verge of going bankrupt. However they decided to capitalize on this medium in an effort to pull themselves back into the black.

Flying Down to Rio was in all respects no different to any other of the films they produced at the time and I'm sure this film would have sank into obscurity and be long forgotten had it not been for the movie milestone it boasts.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were cast as only 3rd and 4th billed performers, to all intents and purposes, the token dance act, a novelty. Neither of them had done much before. Ginger of course was beginning to make a name for herself. She had featured in both the fore-mentioned 42nd Street and Gold Diggers and was slowly working her way out of chorus lines into bit parts and the occasional solo number.

Fred had done less still. Already a well known stage star in America and Britain, he had just one previous film under his belt. A natural dancer of extraordinary talent, Fred was signed on as RKO's secret weapon in their efforts to make the best musicals.

However, no matter how dull the storyline to "Rio" is (and it is believe me) it is soon forgotten when Fred and Ginger perform their first ever screen dance, The Carioca, a musical number with Latin- American tempo complete with stunning costumes, guest singers and the very kaleidoscopic shots of which Busby Berkeley himself would have been proud. It is their only dance together in the film and their actual dancing is given very limited screen-time, but it was enough to cause Astaire/Rogers mania.

Forgive the cliche but the rest is history as they say.

So successful were they that they went on to appear in a further nine films together making them one of the most beloved and cherished screen partnerships ever.

Alone the Astaire/Rogers musicals of the thirties saved the studio from closure and they helped push Warner's, Keeler and Powell into second place, at least as far as musicals were concerned.

Astaire is given further opportunity to shine in two stunning solos which will leave the viewer in no doubt whatsoever why he was the very best at his chosen craft.

Complete with the now famous 'girls-strapped-onto-aeroplane-wings' scene and with the added talents of Delores Del Rio and Gene Raymond adding the romance, It all helps to make an otherwise dull film into a legendary silver screen gem.

There was a golden age of cinema lasting only four or five years - from the end of the silent era to the beginning of the Hays Code, the severe censorship rules which sought to turn cinema from naughty to nice, but in actuality sapped them of their truth and energy.

`Flying Down to Rio' is a classic pre-Hayes code talkie, and its characters have a quality of frankness which endears them to modern audience far more than many later films, whose stilted, conservative quality is somewhat alienating. You'd be surprised at what they could get away with in those days - it would be forty years before a film could get away with a line like that spoken by a starlet of her South American rivals - `What have those girls got below the equator that we haven't got?'

The film, about a love triangle between a Brazilian woman and two members of a swing band, is of course famous for two things - the slightly surreal sequence in which showgirls ride a biplane down to Rio in Busby Berkley-esque formation, and the debut of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as a screen team. It's no wonder that audiences fell in love with the duo, whose `Carioca' is the highlight of the film.

They only made them like this for a little while - more's the shame!

Consider this. RKO released "Flying down to Rio" in 1933, when America was in the very depths of the Great Depression. Millions of Americans were out of work and millions more lived in fear of the economic and political realities plaguing the world.

So Hollywood turned out films like this one, escapist fare about rich dilettantes drifting back and forth from Miami to Rio. Indeed, the hero of this little trifle, Gene Raymond, is the scion of a wealthy family who will inherit lots of money, if he gives up fiddling around with song writing and aviation. And the thing is, pictures liked this one worked. The unemployed probably didn't have the ten cents or more it took to get in to see gems like this, but those who did have the money turned out for this kind of picture, gawking at the upper classes in wonder.

"Flying down to Rio," though, is an early talkie and hardly the best example of this kind of romantic comedy. Directed by Thornton Freeland, an early talkie director whose career was largely undistinguished, it has a loose feel about it and does not marry sound and visuals together with any real skill. The pacing is bad, the musical numbers drag on way too long and the film is not the kind of polished production RKO and the rest of Hollywood would start turning out within the next few years.

But "Flying Down to Rio" is remembered today for one thing and one thing only, the first pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who would become the greatest dance team in movie history. That pairing almost didn't happen, because Ginger's role was originally earmarked for starlet Dorothy Jordan, who wound up catching the eye of Merian C. Cooper, then riding high at RKO after the spectacular success of "King Kong." Jordan became Cooper's girlfriend and quickly his wife and Ginger stepped into her dance shoes and from there into screen immortality. Ironically, Fred and Ginger are not the leads in this film and actually only do one dance number together, but they were good enough to convince the powers that be that new stars had been born, providing those stars could dance their way through their future films.

But aside from that number, there are a couple of other reasons to see this film. The first is top billed star Dolores Del Rio, one of the most beautiful women to ever turn up on the screen. A wealthy socialite from Mexico, she arrived in Hollywood in the silent era and became famous playing a French peasant girl being romanced by two American soldiers in "What Price Glory." Her transition to sound was rocky, though, not because of her voice, but rather what felled many a silent star, her "foreign accent." But it didn't kill her. She returned to Mexico and helped launch its film industry.

Aside from Del Rio, the other things to look for are the Depression era sets. Built to depict hotels and elaborate supper clubs, they are among the most spectacular of the era. And then, finally, there is that other sequence this film is known for, the truly amazing production number featuring the title song, "Flying Down to Rio" in which a bevy of beautiful girls allow themselves to be strapped to the wings of biplanes and flown over Rio as entertainment during the opening of a hotel. While the overwhelming majority of the footage are probably process shots, there appear to be a couple of real life wing walker type shots blended in to give the sequence a realistic feel.

Merian Cooper, then RKO's defacto production boss, was among many other things a pilot himself, an aviation buff and one of the founders of Pan American Airways, the airline that pioneered trans-ocean flight. And even before the famed Pan Am Clippers crossed the Atlantic and the Pacific in the mid-thirties, they'd already established mail and early passenger service to South America with the Sikorsky S-40 nd S-42 flying boats,shown at the end of the film.

In some ways, this film is one big advertisement for the Clippers and for aviation, back when it looked like fun. But then, the real fun was watching Astaire and Rogers in subsequent films proving that in addition to having a good eye for manly stuff like big gorillas and airplanes, Merian C.Cooper was not exactly blind to musical talent, either.