Product Description

In one of their best loved, most charming song-and-dance comedies, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers demonstrate just how they became best known as America's greatest dance team. Includes the Academy Award(R) winning hit "The Continental." Year: 1934 Director: Mark Sandrich Starring: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Alice Brady

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2805 in DVD
• Brand: TURNER HM ENTERTAINM
• Released on: 2006-10-24
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, DVD, Original recording remastered, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English, Italian
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 107 minutes

Features

• In one of their best loved, most charming song-and-dance comedies, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers demonstrate just how they became best known as America's greatest dance team. Includes the Academy Award(R) winning hit "The Continental." Year: 1934 Director: Mark Sandrich Starring: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Alice BradyRunning Time: 105 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: MUSICALS Rating:&n

Amazon.com essential video
The year before, in 1933, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had grabbed America's attention in Flying Down to Rio, even though they were the second bananas in that film. The duo had a certain chemistry--Fred with his lighter-than-air elegance, Ginger with her moxie--and studio heads gambled that they could carry a starring vehicle of their own. Nobody guessed there would be another eight movies together after The Gay Divorcee, which turned into a huge success for RKO Pictures. The plot is the usual silliness, with Ginger a divorce-minded gal in England, Fred a dancer whose sincere interest in her is mistaken for something else. But plots never mattered much in these affairs, and this one achieves a kind of free-floating bliss. Astaire had starred in the stage version of the story, titled The Gay Divorce. The censors forced the extra e to be added to the title because surely no divorce could be portrayed as a happy one (this frothy movie's evidence notwithstanding). Only one song was carried over from the stage show, Cole Porter's smash hit "Night and Day," which forms the basis for a sublime pas de deux between Fred and Ginger. A tune, "The Continental," written for this film won the first Oscar ever awarded in the best-song category. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

The film that established the Astaire-Rogers legend
THE GAY DIVORCE had been perhaps the most important stage musical of Fred Astaire's Broadway career. Though out the 1920s, he had been the lesser half of the most famous dance team in American entertainment: Adele and Fred Astaire. Fred's sister, an enormously gifted comic dancer, had been the center of the act throughout their career, but when she retired to marry English royalty, Fred was placed in the position of needing to reinvent himself and salvage his career. Somewhat unexpectedly, Fred's enormous success in THE GAY DIVORCE established him not just as a comic dancer, but as a romantic one as well. An offer by Hollywood to come and remake the stage success as a film was accepted.

Fred arrived in Hollywood, but his studio, RKO cast him in FLYING TO RIO before beginning THE GAY DIVORCE. Although he was fifth billed and the third billed male, his dance numbers with a contract dancer RKO had just obtained from Warner Brothers, Ginger Rogers, were the hit of the film. Against his wishes, RKO suggested casting Rogers in THE GAY DIVORCE because of their success as a team in FLYING TO RIO. That was what Fred was afraid of: a team. He had just managed to break free from being thought of as the lesser half of Adele and Fred, and he was hesitant about a new partner. But RKO won out and, as they say, history was made.

THE GAY DIVORCE was quickly redubbed THE GAY DIVORCEE (the Hays office objecting that divorces could not be gay but were instead always unhappy affairs, although a divorcee could be). Fred was given nearly complete artistic control of his dance numbers, and instead of the highly choreographed numbers popularized by Busby Berkeley at Warner Brothers, Fred argued for filming his scenes with cameras just barely above ground level, and as close to one shot as was possible. The result was an emphasis not on visual pyrotechnics, but on the intimacy and emotions in the dance.

The results were stunning. Although most of the songs from the stage musical were jettisoned, the greatest was kept, and in many ways it remains one of the mythic numbers in the history of musical cinema: Cole Porter's "Night and Day." The number defined for all time what Fred and Ginger were all about. Until this moment in the film, Fred had been futilely chasing Ginger, only to be rebuffed time and again. But once he begins to sing "Night and Day" she begins to have a twinge of interest. And once he grabs her arm and begins to dance with her, we manage to watch one of the great seduction scenes in the movies. At the beginning of the song, she still has no interest in him; at the end of the dance, they are in love. Although Ginger was never Fred's equal as a dancer, she was extraordinary in the manner in which she could respond emotionally to him in their dancing. Their dancing is so very nearly like love-making that we are not at all surprised that as the dance ends, and Fred's gently spins and lowers Ginger onto a couch, he rocks back on his heels, reaches into his jacket, and pulls out his cigarette and offers one to her. It is as perfect a moment as exists in film.

THE GAY DIVORCEE succeeds primarily because of Fred and Ginger's incredible magic together, but it is also a delight because of the amazing comedic cast. Erik Rhodes, a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, had only two notable roles, both times as an Italian in two classic Astaire-Rogers films. In this film and in TOP HAT, he manages to steal nearly every scene he is in. Edward Everett Horton and Eric Blore both were so perfect in their roles that they reappeared in several other Astaire-Rogers films. Alice Brady brings her classic insanity to the film.

The film, of course, achieved Fred Astaire's worst fears, and gave him a new partner. But given the incredible success of Astaire and Rogers, I don't think anyone believes that this was in any sense an unfortunate turn of events.

My favourite Astaire and Rogers film
Fred Astaire plays a dnacer returning to England from a trip abroad. In the Customs shed he meets Ginger Rogers in an embarassing predicament. He tries to find out who she is, but she refuses to tell him, and he spends ages searching London for her until he finally tracks her down and begins to awaken her interest. Ginger goes down to Brighton with her friend dithery much-married Alice Brady, and Astaire and his dithery lawyer friend Edward Everett Horton go in pursuit. Ginger has gone to Brighton to try and obtain a divorce, she intends to spend the night with a professional co-respondent. Somthing Astaire says makes her think he is the co-respondent, which puts her right off him. Fortunately the real co-respondent, a diminutive Italian, turns up ("your wife is safe with Tonetti,he prefer spaghetti") and the mystery is sorted out. But what will happen when Ginger's husband arrives the next morning? will she get her divorce. This is a wonderful film, with a silly but extremley funny plot, and some wonderful dialogue, particularly between Horton and Brady, who somehow manage to end up married to each other, much to their surprise. An absolutely delightful film.

Beautiful and funny on many levels
Calling the plot of Gay Divorcee "silly" or "needless" reflects the pedantry of the editorial reviewers, who apparently would rather see Astaire and Rogers in tights and tutu. The plot, in my opinion, is clever and funny. Of course, mistaken identity is an old device, but the measure is how well the characters bring it off, and there are six - six! - characters in Gay Divorcee who do this splendidly. How can we ever forget the immortal line, "Your wife is safe with Tonetti, he prefers spaghetti!" and all the permutations of "Chance is the fools name for fate." Or was it "Chances are fate is foolish"?

Anyway, Nureyev said that Fred Astaire was the greatest dancer in the world, and I think Rogers was his best partner. Gay Divorcee's wonderful art nouveau fantasy set, combined with exquisite costuming - even the ridiculous Tonetti is beautifully attired - and the memorable music, provide a perfect framework for the ballets. And the bright, funny dialogue and perfectly cast characters fill in the intervals.

Perhaps the world created by Astaire and Rogers is a fantasy world, but it's plausable enough for me to believe that somehow it would be possible to dress, to act and, yes, to dance in it myself.