BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

l_rawjalaurence Although remembered today for the first pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, FLYING DOWN TO RIO doesn't really give them much to do, apart from one solo and a segment in a long song-and-dance sequence set to Vincent Youmans' "The Carioca." Astaire has a pleasant wise- cracking role playing second fiddle to nominal star Gene Raymond, a Dick Powell lookalike playing romantic hero Roger Bond, who falls in love with Latina beauty Belinha De Rezende (Dolores del Rio) and spends much of the movie pursuing her. Raymond doesn't have much to do, although there is one well-staged dream-sequence where he and del Rio are ostensibly marooned on a desert island, and their souls encourage them to take amorous steps - even though their consciences try to prevent them.This film is not really an Astaire/Rogers dance musical, but Radio Pictures' (they had not yet merged with RKO) version of some of the Busby Berkeley spectaculars being made over at Warner Brothers. There are spectacular sequences involving girls, girls, and lots more girls, including a well-staged version of the title song "Flying Down to Rio" where the girls are ostensibly tied to biplanes flying around in the sky. There are plenty of legs to admire, as well as pretty human patterns (although the choreographer isn't credited). Some of the dance sequences are perhaps a little too long, but they are an integral part of a movie clearly designed to improve audience morale during the Depression.FLYING DOWN TO RIO is very much a movie of its time; its script has occasional racist references (even though director Thornton Freeland springs a surprise on us by showing that one of the Haitian men that Raymond encounters is not quite what he seems. There are also some sexist comments expressed by the males, complete with the kind of gestures that might now be considered offensive. Nonetheless the action unfolds in a jolly way, and there's always Vincent Youmans' clever lyrics to enjoy.The cinematography (by J. Roy Hunt) is particularly innovative, with ever-more ingenious means of shifting between different pieces of action either through dissolves or straight cuts. FLYING DOWN TO RIO is a passable piece of entertainment, although Astaire and Rogers fans might be a little disappointed that they have such peripheral roles in the film.

DKosty123 It is the accidents in Hollywood History that have created some of the greatest moments in films. Casablanca is an accident because of a great script in an otherwise assembly line film. The Wizard of Oz was an accident of chaos in production which just happened to cast Judy Garland and let her play herself at age 16 to become a classic.RKO is strapped for money when this pre-code movie is made, without a doubt. It shows in the production and the casting. Other than Delores Del Rio, no one in this cast was even known to movie goers and because of that RKO cast it on the cheap. It just happened by accident that unknowns Astaire & Rogers got cast in this movie. This elevated this movie beyond where it otherwise would have gone.The plot itself is quite forgettable. The music and dancing turn out to be the strengths of the movie. What a glorious accident this was. I mean if RKO had cast Martha Raye & Lou Costello instead of Astaire and Rogers? One can only imagine where this movie would have wound up.Del Rio does look great in some revealing outfits. The movie does benefit from the pre-code dialog as well. Ginger even gets some outfits that are revealing. The fact is this movie is one of those great accidents in Hollywood history. It is not great, but very good because of that.

chaos-rampant There are two aspects in this otherwise plain musical that call attention, both quite wonderful. The rest of the film seems to be culled from what was going on at Warners at the time, with films like Gold Diggers of '33, so a show about the efforts to stage a show that can seduce love out of the audience, which happens in these cases to be our own attraction to the thing as well.That final show saves the hotel of the beautiful girl's father from financial doom, defeats the scheming money-men, inspires love, and is plain fun to watch, an uproar that takes to the skies with women strapped on the wings of small planes performing every number imaginable above Rio. The audience watches the cinematic fireworks transfixed from down below.But we are not down below, where strictly in practical terms it would have been impossible to discern anything up so high, and this is one of the things that make this worthwhile. We are up on the air where the whole thing is taking place, swirling with the gaudiness of a scantily clad girl troupe performing specifically for us. It is an otherwise impossible point of view, an impossible stageshow, tailored for cinematic space and only possible in it.But of course we are not up there either, literally speaking. The skies are a rear projection. The whole of Rio that we navigate through the film is a rear projection. It is no longer seamless as might have been felt to be at the time, you can call it out every time. The perspectives are a little off. But these things were actually shot on location, Rio and the skies navigated as we see them beneath the extravagant fiction, so beyond a kind of memoir of Rio in the early 30's, I can appreciate the clever engineering it must have taken to integrate the aerial views within a stagebound space, even if most of it looks dated now.So one aspect to watch out for is the visual design of the bird's eye. Another is Astaire and Rogers. This was their first pairing together, and looking at this you can see how they tapped into the hearts of people.They tapped with dance, this is what matters; a dance between ourselves from behind the camera and what those two were dancing out between them. Busby Berkeley was soon about to take this to extremes, so again what is choreographed for the camera may seem too little now, but it must have impressed at the time. Their Carioca number explains how a dance is true when it is danced with a love that is true.So singing as presented in the film is a deception, a manipulative serenade; consider the 'Orchids in the Moonlight' song in what appears to be the beach of a deserted island but with the light of day is revealed to be a resort just outside a golf course, consider the reprise of that song as the scorned Julio reveals to his fiancée that he knows about the whole affair on the island, with a vertigo of shots from there continuously shifting in the background projection.But dance, being a work in form, not merely beautiful words or emotive melody but emotion actually embodied in concentrated practice, it is true, when love is. It wouldn't be allowed on the ground, the film chalks this to a strictly traditional Brazilian society, so it must take to the skies to be consummated.Deep down it is all being staged to win this woman's heart, a woman of such fierce Latin beauty that Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich were both smitten by her in real life.

earlytalkie "Flying Down To Rio" is noted these days for being the first film which paired Astaire and Rogers, and for it's incredible finale with pretty young things strapped to the wings of airplanes in flight (courtesy of some convincing back projection.) The plot is light and fluffy as a soufflé and there are some wonderful character actors like Franklin Pangborn, Eric Blore and one of my favorite battle-axes Blanche Frederici "I think I shall go and eat an aspirin" along for the ride. Some years ago I had the privilege of talking by phone to Ms. Etta Moten, billed in the credits as "the colored singer." Ms. Moten enlightened me as to what it was like to be an African-American in 1930s Hollywood. Ms.Moten played in "Rio" as well as "Golddiggers of 1933". In both films nothing was required of her but to sing a song, but at least in neither film was she required to be a maid or other type of household help. Ms. Moten further told me that color sequences were planned for "Rio", in particular the "Carioca" number in which she appeared. She told me to look closely at the elaborate set. It consisted of many colored tiles which would have shown up beautifully in color. However, RKO was not doing well at the time, and there was simply no money for Technicolor. Color or not, "Flying Down To Rio" is an entertaining film which made a lot of money for RKO during the cash-strapped days of the depression.