Customer Reviews

Roberta

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Whatever you have heard or read to the contrary, this is the best Rogers/Astaire movie. The music is wonderful, the plot is painless, and the dances are the best these two ever did -- particularly "I'll Be Hard to Handle," recorded live so you hear Ginger's breathless laughter. She was never again as beautiful or as sexy as she is here; her five-second skip-dance to the window to hear Fred's orchestra is greater than most performers' entire careers. Endlessly re-seeable and enjoyable.

When ROBERTA (the name of a chic fashion designer) was produced, Irene Dunne was the queen of the RKO lot, and the film was built around her. Dunne sang - with her own voice - YESTERDAYS, LOVELY TO LOOK AT & SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES. Astaire and Rogers dance to LOVELY TO LOOK AT & I WON'T DANCE; he and Ginger both sang and danced to the high-spirited I'LL BE HARD TO HANDLE. If there are weak points in the film, they would include the blandness of Scott's personna and a too-long fashion show at the finale. Notice the pretty blonde model who shows off a very expensive gown with ostrich feathers - it's 24 year-old Lucille Ball!! The Otto Harbach-Jerome Kern musical ROBERTA caused a sensation on Broadway when it opened in the fall of 1933, due mainly to its enchanting song SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES. The original broadway cast included Bob Hope(!), Fred MacMurray and Sydney Greenstreet (!!); it enjoyed a 295-performance run.

Jerome Kern's classic songs like "I'll Be Hard To Handle", "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", "I Won't Dance", and "Lovely To Look At" are only part of the reason that I like Roberta. Even though Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers were not the main focus of this movie they stole the show with thier dancing and comedy. Many people say that this was not Fred & Ginger's best film but I disagree. No matter what anybody else thinks I still say that Roberta is "Lovely to look at"!

this movie is extremely entertaining. Ginger's accent is hilarious. (Vill you dell madame Robairta, that I have an engargment with de Marquis de Indianans.) She steals every scene she's in, and her 'I'll be hard to handle' number is one of my favorites. she and Fred have that friends type relationship which is very amusing. Wisecracks fly everywhere, incuding Fred biting Ginger's hand in the beginning!! They of course do fall into each other's arms at the end, but would the public want it any other way?

Astaire and Rogers were the number one box office draw for 1935, but it wasn't because of the farsightedness of RKO. After the two had managed to score unexpected popularity as a result of their second billed roles in FLYING TO RIO, they obviously needed to be paired in a follow up film. Actually, Fred was quite hesitant about this. He had been part of a dance team for most of his life, as the lesser half of Adele and Fred Astaire. He wasn't sure he wanted a new partner, and he wasn't confident that Rogers, with her background in completely different dance forms, would be the right partner under the best of circumstances. Luckily, he gave the pairing a try, and the result was the greatest dance team in cinema history.

Their second film together was THE GAY DIVORCEE, and it is shocking that after the success of that film, RKO could have even remotely considered having them second billed to anyone. Any film fan today can merely shake their head and ask, "What were they thinking?" Luckily, after this film they were first billed again and reunited with their best director, Mark Sandrich, to continue a string of musical films that remain unmatched.

So, trying to put the disappointment that Irene Dunne and not Fred and Ginger star in the film, how enjoyable is this film? It isn't unwatchable, and the scenes with Fred and Ginger are good. They have some nice dance numbers, though their performance of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" seems more of an afterthought. Irene Dunne was a fine comedic actress, as films such as THE AWFUL TRUTH and MY FAVORITE WIFE would later show, but despite her later appearance in the James Whale version of SHOW BOAT a year later, I don't care for her in musicals. Her voice was a tad too shrill for my taste, and her vibrato irritatingly fast. Moreover, while I like Randolph Scott in Westerns, he always seemed out of place in comedy (though he would be appropriate for MY FAVORITE WIFE). He similarly marred FOLLOW THE FLEET, playing the second romantic lead to Fred. But there is another reason that this film falls far short of what we would later come to expect from an Astaire and Rogers film: the supporting cast. TOP HAT, THE GAY DIVORCEE, and SWINGTIME are all absolutely stellar films, and each one features a rich, deep, and talented cast of supporting players such as Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore, Erik Rhodes, Helen Broderick, and Alice Brady. ROBERTA lacks this kind of depth, and as a result lacks the charm and wit we normally associate with their best films.

So, this is not an unwatchable film, but it is far from one of Fred and Ginger's best. But any serious fan of their work should see it at least once.

Much has been said about this film over the years. Many think it's somehow below par because Astaire & Rogers are playing secondary co-stars rather than leads. But consider this: each new A-R film borrowed plot points from their previous one. They were 'comic relief' co-stars in 3 different movies: FLYING DOWN TO RIO, ROBERTA, and FOLLOW THE FLEET- the last two movies both with Randolph Scott and a singing love interest. These two latter films alternated in relaease with GAY DIVORCEE, TOP HAT, and SWING TIME- and if the plot wasn't 'mistaken identity' (my least favorite story), then it had Astaire & Rogers as one of two couples. I actually preferred these films a tad more because Astaire and Rogers weren't carrying the heavier half of the plot. They already know each other and can make wicked sideline commentary while waiting to go on the dance floor. This is most evident in the wonderful first duet in ROBERTA, "I'll Be Hard To Handle," a wonderfully spontaneous tap debate in a rehearsal setting. This sequence transfers to the critical plot twist with the title character. While the film does go surprisingly dramatic, it's carried off quite nicely with Irene Dunne and title character Helen Westley- already established in a kind of mother-daughter working relationship- in the breathtaking scene which becomes the song "Yesterdays." (It's a bewitching moment when the light dims in the room as Dunne's vocal fades away). And all the crazy fashions are worth enduring for the Astaire-Rogers duet of "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes." Rogers emerges as one of the models on parade (following a cameo by a platinum Lucille Ball) in what looks like a satin nightgown and joins Astaire for a sublime walk-around-the-floor. My only complaint lies in the poor sound quality of the musical soundtrack more than anything else.

As others have noted, the negative criticism of this excellent film is both uninformed and off-point. Randolph Scott is "wooden" because he's playing a former football player, contrasting with the irrepressible vitality of Astaire & Rogers, and the awesome talents of Irene Dunne, which must have taken some effort for Scott, who could be quite unreserved off-camera. It's also a film full of interesting historical perspectives, from emigre Russian aristocrats in Paris, to Astaire's aspersions against the outfits he's supposed to be selling in the fashion show, itself a staple of films of that time and after, e.g., "The Women" and "How To Marry A Millionaire." Yes, the dancing doesn't occupy quite as much time as it does in other Astaire-Rogers films, but with Dunne and Scott on the set, who cares? And then there's Jerome Kern's music, which should make any discerning mind wonder exactly what happened to American theatrical composition and popular song between his era and the present. But that's the stuff of a documentary, not the engagingly pure, multifaceted entertainment that "Roberta" offers. More than two thumbs up: this one gets a double high-five!

OK so Irene Dunne is the star. Well she was a bigger, established cinema icon than newcomers Astaire and Rogers. But who really cares? This is an enjoyable movie based on the hit play. Sit back and enjoy the high stepping that would forever immortalize the team of Astaire & Rogers and singing the wonderful songs by the great American composers. They get their just screen time and went on to star in their own vehicles. Irene does the definitive version of the classic SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES with her silken honey soprano and no one can top her.

The story is a bit stagy and true, some of the brighter moments belong to Fred and Ginger. This is mainly because Randolph Scott who makes a dashing leading man is completely out of place as Dunne's love interest in this film.

Sit back, zip the lip and be thankful this classic is available on pristine DVD! Want more, buy the Astaire's/Roger's box set which includes this early outing for them.

Amen.

For several reasons, this is the comparatively hidden entry in the classic Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers filmography, but this 1935 film has been blissfully released in a fairly clean print transfer on DVD, both as an individual purchase and as part of a complete Astaire-Rogers DVD set. With great songs from the Jerome Kern songbook, the movie certainly contains the high-caliber musical quality of the other films starring the dancing pair. The challenge is really in the cumbersome story set-up and in the simple fact that Astaire and Rogers play decidedly secondary characters in the story.

The film's primary focus is on Stephanie, an exiled Russian princess working as a sales assistant in the House of Roberta, the most fashionable couturière in all of Paris. It is run by a lovable dowager referred to as Aunt Minnie, whose nephew Jack Kent ends up in Paris after his band gets fired right after they disembark from their transatlantic voyage. Astaire plays Jack's best friend, bandleader "Huck" Haines, and Rogers is a faux-Polish countess named Sharvenka a.k.a. Lizzie Gatz, Huck's ex-dancing partner who has become a Paris nightclub headliner. The various romantic pairings occur, but an unexpected tragedy strikes with Minnie's death and her wish to leave the shop to the woefully unqualified Jack, who of course needs Stephanie's fashion sense to make the company continue to thrive.

The plot threads start to feel unwieldy after a while, but journeyman director William A. Seiter is smart enough to know when to include the musical interludes. Astaire-Rogers fans may be disappointed to find them dance only twice in the film together, the first well after the half-hour mark in an informal but energetic tap routine and the second near the end in their standard formal wear. Astaire has only one solo to "I Won't Dance"; and perhaps to pacify fans, there is a brief reprisal dance inserted after the story's actual ending though dramatically it makes little sense. Irene Dunne gets to sing four songs - a Russian lullaby and three Kern gems ("Yesterdays", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "Lovely to Look At") - in her bell-like operatic soprano, pretty in itself but seemingly at odds with the jazzy sound of the rest of the score.

A year before she let her inner screwball comedienne emerge in "Theodora Goes Wild", a severe-looking Dunne is saddled with a stiff, uninteresting part as Stephanie, and she is not aided much by a bumptious Randolph Scott, who has to play the somewhat ignorant and judgmental Jack on a relative one note. Astaire and a particularly funny Rogers, on the other hand, are breezy and sharp with the little screen time they do get. Little-remembered Claire Dodd predictably plays Jack's slithery fiancée Sophie, while character actress Helen Westley plays Minnie with her amusing gruffness intact (she was to reunite with Dunne the next year in James Whale's classic version of "Showboat").

There's an extended fashion show at the end, and you can easily spot a bleached blonde, baby-faced Lucille Ball in ostrich feathers among the models. The resulting movie shows the whole to be somewhat less than the sum of its parts, but it's still worthwhile for the talent involved in the production. The 2006 DVD contains some interesting curios as extras - the original trailer (in relatively poor condition); a full-color twenty-minute 1935 musical short, "Starlit Days the Lido", with oddly attired variety acts entertaining bemused Hollywood stars like Clark Gable and Robert Montgomery; a vintage cartoon, "The Calico Dragon" about a little girl's dream of her stuffed animals coming to life to protect her from the dragon; and an eleven-minute audio-only radio promo for the movie.

I have had the opportunity to see this movie several times and want to own the video someday. The music and dancing is extrodinaire, and the acting is impeccable, I simply loved it. Irene Dunne has a wonderful role as so often she did in movies of this genre......such as "The Awful Truth" and "My Favorite Wife" both co-starring Cary Grant. Even the fashion boutique slant to the "Roberta" story is interesting in that the designs are quite beautiful and viable for the year in which the movie was made. Again, if only for the dancing of Astaire and Rogers this video is well worth seeing over and over.