Oct. 28, 2002 - 4:27 pm
ok, i said there was more Ginger Rogers to come. another good thing is that this film is directed by Sam Wood, who also directed Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) which was just awesome. he has a talent for bringing out a lot of very realistic emotion from his stars. but the reason i picked out this specific Ginger Rogers film originally is because this is the film she won her Oscar for. the film was also nominated for Best Director, Best Writing, and Best Picture.
the movie is told in primarily a flashback format. it's the story of how Kitty got to the decision that she's at right now. she has to decide if she wants to go off and marry the doctor named Mark or the guy from Philadelphia that she can't seem to get out of her mind. in order to totally understand her decision we have to go through episodically and see all of the primary interactions she's had with those two men and we must decide for ourselves which suitor she should choose.
ok, Ginger Rogers was awesome in this movie. her acting showed marked improvement between the early 30s and this film. great stuff. the bad thing is that her hair is really dark in this film. with the other two Fred Astaire films that i've seen her in previously, her hair almost looks blonde. and that's weird to me because they mentioned the fact that she has red hair in both of the previous films. so it seems like it would've been somewhat dark looking in those films too. all three films are in black and white. i don't understand. but i guess women dyed their hair back then too. but now i have slim to no idea what her hair looked like naturally. oh well. i'll just decide that it looks more blonde than red, since i think that looks better.
anyway, aside from the deep red hair problem, the two leading men in this film were kind of goofy. the weird side-smirking smile of this Wyn guy just made me feel uncomfortable every time i saw it. and to me, it always felt like he was lying, even though he wasn't supposed to be.
this film would probably be called sexist (in today's context) on a couple of phrases that are spoken in the text of the film. things like "one of the many jobs of man is to teach woman about the world they live in." stuff like that. but oh well. it's 1940 and what are you going to do?
anyway, this was overall a pretty good movie and i should just now mention that it is a wonderful world if you can get yourself actually interested in watching films from the late 30s to mid 50s. that period of time is so different in America than what has existed in most of our lifetimes. it's a world we can learn from, and learn about ourselves from. so try to start watching more films from then if you can find some things you like.