Carefree

I didn't like Swing Time, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' 1936 pairing (their sixth) and, although I guess I liked Carefree from 1938 a bit more, it has all the same problems. In the first place, it's obsessed with plot, with so much writing that it can't seem to squeeze in musical numbers – there are only four in this film and one of them is in slow motion. I don't understand this, although I suppose Ginger Rogers really must have seen herself as an actress, and she imbues this character with lots of feeling – the character she's created is actually quite sensitive and deep.

But this sort of goes directly against what I understand the point of a movie like this to be. I would like dance numbers and I would like singing. Instead Carefree gives us plot twists. It does have comedy, don't get me wrong. And some of it is actually funny. Hattie McDaniel gets two excellent laughs, and Luella Gear and Jack Carson have some good bits. I'm wondering, now that I think about it, if this change in the way the movie musical is working is related at all to the new and more serious ("integrated") book musicals that were happening at the Princess Theatre. It seems to me like Carefree and Swing Time are trying something – and it might make sense to look at them as part of similar attempts at the Princess.

And although this movie is directed by Mark Sandrich and not George Stevens, Carefree contains the same kind of weird fade-outs that Swing Time has. We stay in a scene just a bit too long and we fade out on this bit of plot in order to further complicate something that isn't the least bit complicated.

Carefree's weirdness is compounded by the basic smarminess of Astaire's character in this film. When we first meet him he's a sexist doctor. And then as the film progresses he hypnotizes the woman who loves him and then betrays his very good friend. When Astaire and Rogers walked down the aisle at the end (because of course they did), I wasn't sure this is what I wanted to happen at all.

I watched this on HBOmax, and I'm going to see another one – Shall We Dance – before it leaves at the end of this month. Maybe I'll like that one.