Everybody's entitled to make a mistake. Apparently, everybody who contributed anything to "Carefree" simultaneously decided this was their bad hair day.
First, the high spots. Ginger Rogers never looked lovelier. EQUALLY lovely, but never lovelier. Howard Greer's costumes, and especially those HATS, anticipated the '40s by a couple of years. One of her ensembles, featuring a large heart over her, um, "heart," pierced by arrows as she's being "treated" by her would-be paramour, Astaire, has to be seen to be believed. Why not just a subtitle reading: "This is the scene where her heart gets pierced by Love?" Nobody anywhere, on- or off-screen dressed like this before or since.
So much for the high spots.
It goes without saying that no Astaire-Rogers dance pairing can be BAD. But it serves no one to pretend these are great. They aren't. Irving Berlin's sole contribution worth mentioning is "Change Partners and Dance." Yet even THAT is badly staged by director Mark Sandrich, with whom Miss Rogers desperately wanted NOT to work.
As for Berlin's "The Yam," the less said the better. Astaire refused to sing the inane lyrics. So Rogers soloed them before joining Astaire in a dance-a-thon through the country club, joined by other members. It's rousing, within the film's context, but immediately forgotten (unlike, say, "The Carioca" from "Flying Down to Rio" years earlier.) "The Yam" failed to catch on as America's latest dance craze, for obvious reasons.
The only other memorable number is Astaire's solo on the golf course, dancing up a storm and whacking golf balls in perfect rhythm. Yet even THIS is hardly Astaire's most memorable dance sequence: the gimmick with the golf shots is more memorable than anything he does with his feet.
Yet it is perhaps the plot and script that are the most unattractive.
The entire story hinges on Astaire's psychiatrist's misogyny -- his pre-interview stereotyping of would-be patient Rogers as just another flighty (and worse) female. Rogers overhears the remark on a recording conveniently left for her to discover by the "writers" of the screenplay and is rightfully insulted. The psychiatrist's opinion of women patients and Rogers' "revenge" are supposed to be funny.
Jack Carter and Luella Gear (as Rogers' Aunt Cora) are also supposed to be funny. They're not. Carter, always an underrated actor (yet capable of terrific work in "Mildren Pierce" and "A Star Is Born" and "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof") is given nothing to do and impossible lines to do it with. Gear (did you ever hear of HER again? No.) is equally saddled with third-rate material. Her running gag, "Oh, Joe, sit down," is already stale the second time it's repeated. Much less the third, fourth or fifth. By the time it's reversed, at the end -- "Oh, Joe, stand up!" -- it merely serves to remind us how tiresome "Carefree" really is.
More disturbing is "Carefree's" truly ugly subtext. A psychiatrist who trivializes and belittles women (Astaire) grudgingly accepts his alcoholic best friend's (Ralph Bellamy, wasted in more ways than one) fiancée as a patient. She, the ambitious strong-willed radio star, immediately "weakens," of course, and falls hopelessly in love with her woman-hating psychiatrist. Naturally, this leads to a slow-motion dance sequence in which our ambitious heroine "submits" to her tuxedoed toe-twinkling sexist shrink.
Next, he knocks her out with drugs, in order to "make" her "tell the truth." Rogers gets to do her patented schtick of acting childish and ridiculous "under the influence" -- which she did better than anybody, most notably to perfection in 1952's "Monkey Business" with Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe.
But there's no getting around that she's been drugged by a woman-hating shrink who incompetently leaves her in a situation to escape -- life-threateningly -- into the streets.
Still not laughing? How about this? ANOTHER dance sequence, this time featuring the "hypnotized" submissive Rogers responding like a sensuous robot under Astaire's mesmerizing "hand gestures." A masculine force so powerful (Fred Astaire?) that all he need do is lift a finger to get his "woman" to do his bidding? She is completely at his mercy in this unsettling sequence. Particularly since Rogers, even supposedly "hypnotized," was always a stronger on screen presence than Astaire. ("He gave her class: she gave him sex," one wag is supposed to have said of the Astaire-Rogers collaboration. And it's true. It's also true that "sex" wins out over "class" every time, on film.)
But wait! There's more! Not guffawing over a man manipulating a "powerless" woman like a lifeless marionette to second-rate Irving Berlin?
How's THIS for a knockout finish? Let's really knock out the heroine -- to bring her out of her "trance," of course, and restore her senses by physically assaulting her and punching her in the face!
Yep. That's what happens. Of course, neither Astaire nor the "writers" could bring themselves to actually have Astaire deliver the punch. He gets cold feet literally at the last second and Ralph Bellamy "accidentally" delivers the fateful blow to Miss Rogers.
Whereupon Astaire and lovingly "submissive" Rogers head for the altar and their wedding vows with her sporting a "hilarious" black eye.
Hah, hah.
Even in the context of the mores of the times, "Carefree" is perhaps the meanest musical ever filmed. It is certainly one of the weakest.
Yet despite all that, there's no denying the magic of Astaire and Rogers when they dance -- even on a bad hair day.
First, the high spots. Ginger Rogers never looked lovelier. EQUALLY lovely, but never lovelier. Howard Greer's costumes, and especially those HATS, anticipated the '40s by a couple of years. One of her ensembles, featuring a large heart over her, um, "heart," pierced by arrows as she's being "treated" by her would-be paramour, Astaire, has to be seen to be believed. Why not just a subtitle reading: "This is the scene where her heart gets pierced by Love?" Nobody anywhere, on- or off-screen dressed like this before or since.
So much for the high spots.
It goes without saying that no Astaire-Rogers dance pairing can be BAD. But it serves no one to pretend these are great. They aren't. Irving Berlin's sole contribution worth mentioning is "Change Partners and Dance." Yet even THAT is badly staged by director Mark Sandrich, with whom Miss Rogers desperately wanted NOT to work.
As for Berlin's "The Yam," the less said the better. Astaire refused to sing the inane lyrics. So Rogers soloed them before joining Astaire in a dance-a-thon through the country club, joined by other members. It's rousing, within the film's context, but immediately forgotten (unlike, say, "The Carioca" from "Flying Down to Rio" years earlier.) "The Yam" failed to catch on as America's latest dance craze, for obvious reasons.
The only other memorable number is Astaire's solo on the golf course, dancing up a storm and whacking golf balls in perfect rhythm. Yet even THIS is hardly Astaire's most memorable dance sequence: the gimmick with the golf shots is more memorable than anything he does with his feet.
Yet it is perhaps the plot and script that are the most unattractive.
The entire story hinges on Astaire's psychiatrist's misogyny -- his pre-interview stereotyping of would-be patient Rogers as just another flighty (and worse) female. Rogers overhears the remark on a recording conveniently left for her to discover by the "writers" of the screenplay and is rightfully insulted. The psychiatrist's opinion of women patients and Rogers' "revenge" are supposed to be funny.
Jack Carter and Luella Gear (as Rogers' Aunt Cora) are also supposed to be funny. They're not. Carter, always an underrated actor (yet capable of terrific work in "Mildren Pierce" and "A Star Is Born" and "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof") is given nothing to do and impossible lines to do it with. Gear (did you ever hear of HER again? No.) is equally saddled with third-rate material. Her running gag, "Oh, Joe, sit down," is already stale the second time it's repeated. Much less the third, fourth or fifth. By the time it's reversed, at the end -- "Oh, Joe, stand up!" -- it merely serves to remind us how tiresome "Carefree" really is.
More disturbing is "Carefree's" truly ugly subtext. A psychiatrist who trivializes and belittles women (Astaire) grudgingly accepts his alcoholic best friend's (Ralph Bellamy, wasted in more ways than one) fiancée as a patient. She, the ambitious strong-willed radio star, immediately "weakens," of course, and falls hopelessly in love with her woman-hating psychiatrist. Naturally, this leads to a slow-motion dance sequence in which our ambitious heroine "submits" to her tuxedoed toe-twinkling sexist shrink.
Next, he knocks her out with drugs, in order to "make" her "tell the truth." Rogers gets to do her patented schtick of acting childish and ridiculous "under the influence" -- which she did better than anybody, most notably to perfection in 1952's "Monkey Business" with Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe.
But there's no getting around that she's been drugged by a woman-hating shrink who incompetently leaves her in a situation to escape -- life-threateningly -- into the streets.
Still not laughing? How about this? ANOTHER dance sequence, this time featuring the "hypnotized" submissive Rogers responding like a sensuous robot under Astaire's mesmerizing "hand gestures." A masculine force so powerful (Fred Astaire?) that all he need do is lift a finger to get his "woman" to do his bidding? She is completely at his mercy in this unsettling sequence. Particularly since Rogers, even supposedly "hypnotized," was always a stronger on screen presence than Astaire. ("He gave her class: she gave him sex," one wag is supposed to have said of the Astaire-Rogers collaboration. And it's true. It's also true that "sex" wins out over "class" every time, on film.)
But wait! There's more! Not guffawing over a man manipulating a "powerless" woman like a lifeless marionette to second-rate Irving Berlin?
How's THIS for a knockout finish? Let's really knock out the heroine -- to bring her out of her "trance," of course, and restore her senses by physically assaulting her and punching her in the face!
Yep. That's what happens. Of course, neither Astaire nor the "writers" could bring themselves to actually have Astaire deliver the punch. He gets cold feet literally at the last second and Ralph Bellamy "accidentally" delivers the fateful blow to Miss Rogers.
Whereupon Astaire and lovingly "submissive" Rogers head for the altar and their wedding vows with her sporting a "hilarious" black eye.
Hah, hah.
Even in the context of the mores of the times, "Carefree" is perhaps the meanest musical ever filmed. It is certainly one of the weakest.
Yet despite all that, there's no denying the magic of Astaire and Rogers when they dance -- even on a bad hair day.