With two such talented and appealing leads, the studio must have felt it needn't spend any money on a script. Not only the story as a whole but the individual gags are from hunger, as we used to say. Sample: Fred Astaire, not knowing who Rita Hayworth is, comments adversely on her family; a minute or two later, he does the same with Adolph Menjou; a few minutes later, he and Xavier Cugat ridicule their boss, Menjou, not realising he has entered the room behind them. How lazy can you get! We are also supposed to think it hilarious that someone falls down. This is condescending enough to the audience, but positively insulting to Astaire when he has to tell Hayworth he is just an unsophisticated rube from Omaha (Astaire's actual birthplace), and she has to ask him (he is over 40) if he has ever kissed a girl! A pity Astaire wasn't as exacting over scripts as he was over choreography.
If it's best to ignore the dialogue scenes, however, the musical numbers are unmissable. We get to see Astaire using Latin rhythms in his choreography, as well as a style of dancing that, as in his "audition" number in Menjou's office, involves a more emphatic use of hips and thighs. The big romantic number, "I'm Old-Fashioned," is sex in motion, a kind of partner to the "Night and Day" number in "The Gay Divorcée." In the earlier film (the first in which he starred with Ginger Rogers), the dance is a seduction of the reluctant maiden. Here, despite Hayworth's being much younger than Astaire, it is, given her greater sensuality, more like the passionate-but-comfortable partnership of a long-married couple. And when the two wrap their arms around each other in the "Shorty George" number, they show a physical pleasure that is absent in their awkward, corny conversation.
Others have remarked on Adolphe Menjou's being angry and domineering and not at all funny in what is meant as a comic role. To those who know Hayworth's sad history, the part is extremely discomfiting, given that Menjou was such an old lech and that the story has him writing anonymous love notes to her, trying to warm up his frigid daughter. In real life, Hayworth's father, with whom she had a dance act, repeatedly raped her, and the sexy, manipulative screen personality she showed the world (as is typical with sexually abused girls), was a cover for her real fear and reserve. As she ruefully said, "Men go to bed with Gilda, but they wake up with me."
If it's best to ignore the dialogue scenes, however, the musical numbers are unmissable. We get to see Astaire using Latin rhythms in his choreography, as well as a style of dancing that, as in his "audition" number in Menjou's office, involves a more emphatic use of hips and thighs. The big romantic number, "I'm Old-Fashioned," is sex in motion, a kind of partner to the "Night and Day" number in "The Gay Divorcée." In the earlier film (the first in which he starred with Ginger Rogers), the dance is a seduction of the reluctant maiden. Here, despite Hayworth's being much younger than Astaire, it is, given her greater sensuality, more like the passionate-but-comfortable partnership of a long-married couple. And when the two wrap their arms around each other in the "Shorty George" number, they show a physical pleasure that is absent in their awkward, corny conversation.
Others have remarked on Adolphe Menjou's being angry and domineering and not at all funny in what is meant as a comic role. To those who know Hayworth's sad history, the part is extremely discomfiting, given that Menjou was such an old lech and that the story has him writing anonymous love notes to her, trying to warm up his frigid daughter. In real life, Hayworth's father, with whom she had a dance act, repeatedly raped her, and the sexy, manipulative screen personality she showed the world (as is typical with sexually abused girls), was a cover for her real fear and reserve. As she ruefully said, "Men go to bed with Gilda, but they wake up with me."