One of the less well-remembered Fred Astaire solo features, I was attracted to it for a number of reasons, its direction by Vincente Minnelli, it being shot in glorious Technicolour and just its intriguing title.
Fred is Johnny Riggs, a traveling conman, the brains of an almost "Of Mice And Men"-type duo with his slightly dopey partner Frank Morgan, who find themselves down on their luck in the mythical South American country of Patrea. Then, he chances upon a beautiful young girl, Lucille Bremer, a rich heiress who's just come of age and is about to take her place in society, under the waspish guardianship of her busybody aunt, Mildred Natwick, after years of growing up in a convent. When she expresses aloud a wish for divine assistance to help her manage her vast fortune, Fred happens to overhear her and sees a chance for a big con, promptly assuming the role of her living and breathing guardian angel who will take away all her financial worries by having her conveniently sign over all of her fortune to him. But naturally things don't go to plan as he starts to develop feelings for the young woman and just what is their interfering fellow-traveler Leon Ames up to as he seems to be forever getting in the way of Fred's master-plan?
Unsuccessful on first release, Astaire reportedly took more of a back-seat than usual in the making and in particular choreography of this film. For a musical, it doesn't actually have a lot of songs and one of those is a rather twee ensemble piece extolling the Shangri-La-type virtues of the place as sung by Bremer and her fellow convent students. Fred doesn't even get to dance until well over a half-hour into the movie and while it's not one of the super-inventive solo numbers with which he'd made his name, it compensates by being set in a magnificent Dali-esque blasted landscape. Of course, he and Bremer do later get to dance together and combine well when they do.
For me, besides the film's lack of musicality, the problems for me with it were firstly just how much of a heel Astaire's character actually is, as almost up until the very end he's still going all the way through with his deception and secondly, the rather pat ending which comes literally our of nowhere.
All that said, who couldn't be entertained by the sumptuous tableaus which Minelli presents here in what was Astaire's first colour feature. Miss Bremer has a nice screen presence to go with her dancing skills and it's a bit of a pity that her film career wasn't longer-lived. Natwick gets some funny lines at the beginning of the movie but rather disappears from view afterwards, Ames is suitably suave as Fred's apparent rival but Morgan only irritates as Astaire's bumbling sidekick.
Whilst not the best example of Astaire or Minelli:s work, that particular bandwagon would roll several years later, this easy-on-the-eye curio is still worth a look-in for fans of both screen legends.
As beautiful to look at as it is, this film proves that even in a musical, there has to be some appreciable content no matter how much visual style is on display.
Fred is Johnny Riggs, a traveling conman, the brains of an almost "Of Mice And Men"-type duo with his slightly dopey partner Frank Morgan, who find themselves down on their luck in the mythical South American country of Patrea. Then, he chances upon a beautiful young girl, Lucille Bremer, a rich heiress who's just come of age and is about to take her place in society, under the waspish guardianship of her busybody aunt, Mildred Natwick, after years of growing up in a convent. When she expresses aloud a wish for divine assistance to help her manage her vast fortune, Fred happens to overhear her and sees a chance for a big con, promptly assuming the role of her living and breathing guardian angel who will take away all her financial worries by having her conveniently sign over all of her fortune to him. But naturally things don't go to plan as he starts to develop feelings for the young woman and just what is their interfering fellow-traveler Leon Ames up to as he seems to be forever getting in the way of Fred's master-plan?
Unsuccessful on first release, Astaire reportedly took more of a back-seat than usual in the making and in particular choreography of this film. For a musical, it doesn't actually have a lot of songs and one of those is a rather twee ensemble piece extolling the Shangri-La-type virtues of the place as sung by Bremer and her fellow convent students. Fred doesn't even get to dance until well over a half-hour into the movie and while it's not one of the super-inventive solo numbers with which he'd made his name, it compensates by being set in a magnificent Dali-esque blasted landscape. Of course, he and Bremer do later get to dance together and combine well when they do.
For me, besides the film's lack of musicality, the problems for me with it were firstly just how much of a heel Astaire's character actually is, as almost up until the very end he's still going all the way through with his deception and secondly, the rather pat ending which comes literally our of nowhere.
All that said, who couldn't be entertained by the sumptuous tableaus which Minelli presents here in what was Astaire's first colour feature. Miss Bremer has a nice screen presence to go with her dancing skills and it's a bit of a pity that her film career wasn't longer-lived. Natwick gets some funny lines at the beginning of the movie but rather disappears from view afterwards, Ames is suitably suave as Fred's apparent rival but Morgan only irritates as Astaire's bumbling sidekick.
Whilst not the best example of Astaire or Minelli:s work, that particular bandwagon would roll several years later, this easy-on-the-eye curio is still worth a look-in for fans of both screen legends.
As beautiful to look at as it is, this film proves that even in a musical, there has to be some appreciable content no matter how much visual style is on display.