Customer Reviews

Tonight & Every Night [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Rita Hayworth is radiant in this film--she just kept getting lovelier and lovelier. Her biographers note that she was pregnant with her first child, Rebecca Welles (Rita was married to Orson Welles at the time), during the making of this film, and maybe it's that maternal glow that makes her look even more beautiful than usual here.

Her dancing, as always, is a joy to watch, especially in the physically demanding number "You Excite Me." And her acting is terrific too. She had such a lovely soft way of speaking, very sensitive and natural, especially in the one-on-one moments with Lee Bowman (the romantic lead in the film). For a musical, it's interesting that it doesn't have the usual happy ending. The story line is more mature, more realistically reflecting the danger of London during World War II.

I highly recommend this film and sincerely hope that Columbia will bring it out on DVD very soon!

I can't wait for Columbia/Sony Pictures to release this film on DVD.

Rita Hayworth was truly a stunner in every respect, and her studio did their upmost to showcase her beauty and talents as a dancer in film after film. Kudos to them!!! This one is a perfect example of such a Star vehicle. Luscious Technicolor, a number of EXTREME closeups of the creamy Love Goddess herself, a variety of musical numbers, including one sizzling samba with Rita in a white costume that shows a lot of flesh.

Watch Rita undulate (dictionary: to move in a smooth wavelike motion--amen!!) as sings "You Excite Me"!! In this number as well as others Rita shows off her great talent as a dancer, perhaps the best all-around female dancer in Hollywood. She has an unearthly grace that no other dancer has matched.

The story takes place in wartime england during the blitz, and ends sadly, which is not typical of a 1940's musical. Still, this is a very entertaining film. MGM may have made the best musicals, but Columbia's Hayworth musicals also have class and a niche of their own in Hollywood history.

How can someone write that this is a turkey ?
He must be blind, deaf and totaly lacking of romance...
This musical is a wonderful example of what the old Hollywood
was : Music, Glamour, Song and Dance and most of all the
beautiful Rita in gorgous Technicolor.
One of the best Hayworth - dance numbers ever on screen performed is "You excite me" : Rita doing Samba is something to watch...she tosses her red hair and one can imagine the GI's going crazy...

His name was Marc Platt, a brilliant dancer who made his movie debut in this film, and I doubt if anybody who ever saw it has forgotten him, though they may not remember his name.
Marc Platt was, I think, the first American dancer to join the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlos when it settled in the US during the Second World War. He was a dancer on Broadway, too, and today the movie he's most likely to be remembered for, is SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS, in which he, naturally, is one of the brothers.
But in Tonight and Every Night he has a great introduction. He comes as a young dancer to get a job in the theater, run by Florence Bates, who plays a wry version of the same character played recently by Judy Dench. This was the London theater that never closed during the German bombing of the city, which is what the title inicates: Tonight and Every Night.

When Bates asks what his 'forte' is, the young red haired dancer says he's just a dancer. Did he bring his music with him for an audition? No, but just turn on your radio and I'll dance to whatever comes on. So, she does, and he does; he dances to several different styles of pop music of the time, a little Latin, a little jitterbug, and then she presses a button and gets a speech by a screaming Adolph Hitler. After only a seond's hesitation, Plat starts to dance to that, too, and it's one of those moments you know you'll always remember. It's something like the effect when the silver female replica of the heroic heroine in METROPOLIS dances; a stark, high-stepping, robotic march of mania that makes him seem almost mechanical, but beautiful. Well -- Rita was beautiful. Marc Platt was electrifying in that otherwise pretty forgetable movie.

This WWII story of a musical hall that never quit as the bombs fell is unavoidably a bit sappy, but it's mainly a star vehicle for Hayworth, midway between and with elements of both the pert and plucky ingenue of Cover Girl and the Astaire musicals and the sultry sex symbol of Gilda. She's better at the extremes, but perfectly adequate as actor and dancer in this middle ground. If you've seen samba, you'll find that the one referred to in other reviews is really nothing special; the terrific dance routine, also mentioned elsewhere, is the solo by Marc Platt, itself worth the price of admission. Hayworth always did her best dancing with a partner; sadly, later vehicles, like this one, had her without one. Still, she looks her best here, and her best is quite extraordinary.

This may be the worst musical ever to appear from a major Hollywood studio. Its Golden Turkey status is based on several features: worst sets, worst music, and absolutely the worst screenplay. Poor Rita Hayworth; she was forced to do whatever Harry Cohn, who ran Columbia, commanded. At one point, she and young Janet Blair do a dance in long-johns that is one of the low points in movie history. The choreography is abominable. But then, so is this film.