Carefree

Watched Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers' Carefree (1938) this afternoon. I've never been big on musicals and I'm now making an effort to get accustomed to (and maybe even like) them. I enjoyed this one, but mostly for its non-musical elements. The plot revolves around Tony Flagg (Astaire), a psychologist who's commissioned by his friend Steve (Ralph Bellamy) to psychoanalyze Amanda Cooper (Ginger Rogers) in order to determine why she keeps breaking off their engagement. Of course, Tony and Amanda through their antagonistic/playful interaction fall in love and the screwball situations ensue. It's not a weighty story, but there are some pretty great scenes involving Amanda going on a destructive rampage under the influence of a sedative and, later, trying to kill Tony with a shotgun due to hypnosis-gone-awry. The best scene, though, is the song and dance number "I Used to be Color Blind" which is played out in a slow-motion dream sequence. It's an eerily beautiful and simple scene. For me, production on this scale works much more effectively than the few big-budget '50s musicals I've seen and it makes me interested in checking out the other movies starring these two.