It speaks something for a movie when the only real gripe I have with it is “it wasn’t shot in color,” but it was 1942 and though I’m known to be a dick on the BackLOG from time to time, that’s not one of the things that I really have the right to be a dick about. But seriously…color would have made this. Rita Hayworth has gone on record saying You Were Never Lovelier was her favorite of all her films, second only to You’ll Never Get Rich, which this film was the follow-up to. Now, I haven’t seen Get Rich, but I kind of want to all of a sudden after the amount of awe this movie left me in.
Before Brangelina and TomKat were even fetuses, there were the on-screen couples that took to the screen in ways the Snooki and The Sitch (is that even his name now?) wish they could: with dignity and class. Like action movies of the last twenty years that pitted Owen vs. Statham, Stallone vs. Swayze, Travolta vs. Cage, Thurman vs. Everybody (sorry, I love Kill Bill), the movies during the Golden Age of Cinema were made epic with their brightest stars sharing the screen and slaying their audiences with true talent, charm, and beauty. Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Taylor and…Everybody again, and in the case of Lovelier, Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth, the dancers work in masterful form. They captured my heart and attention with a film that was beautiful, funny, cleverly written, impeccably acted, and quite honestly, everything that makes me love classic cinema.
Set in Buenos Aires, it follows the story of Robert Davis (Fred Astaire), a down-on-his-luck gambler/song and dance man who is only looking for a place to work and happens to find himself in the presence of Eduardo Acuna, an uncaring, impatient asshole who is struggling to get his daughter Maria (Rita Hayworth) married and really doesn’t like the cut of Robert’s jib. Acuna is a man of tradition and wants his daughters to marry in older of eldest to youngest and the “refrigerated” daughter #2 Maria is as cold as they come, which is a problem for daughters #3 and 4, who have already found love and are just waiting for their turn to tie the knot. In a scheme to get Maria to accept at least the idea of falling in love, he sends flowers and notes on behalf of a secret admirer, which Maria becomes intrigued with and accidentally believes it’s Robert’s doing. While the rest of the family desperately and deviously tries to push this romance to the next level, Robert and Eduardo fiercely combat each other while trying to find creative and passive ways to correct Maria’s error, but not disillusion her from the idea of romance altogether.
It’s rare to take a story like this and set it as a musical, which is what Lovelier actually classifies itself as: a musical, but there was enough laugh-out-loud humor and “holy crap, is that seriously going to happen” moments that make this seem less like a movie and more like a stage play…which is another one of those “signs you’re watching classic Hollywood.” Everybody in this film was a joy to watch and I found myself shouting “you asshole” in many moments because of how crafty people were at getting things to happen the way they wanted to, and it was all incredibly sweet…if everyone were hoping for the same thing, but that’s what made it fun. As expected for Astaire and Hayworth, their chemistry and seamless fluidity in spectacular dancing carried over to their on-screen romance and there was a completely different feel when the two were together that was simply enchanting.
It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to say this, but I had to spend a lot of time trying to think of things wrong with the movie that might knock it down a peg, but it has been a long time in the BackLOG since I have had this much fun watching a movie that did everything it needed to right to create the kind of experience that defined “The Golden Age of Cinema.” Putting everything together, I am proud to say that You Were Never Lovelier receives the rare and elusive perfect 10 dustbusters out of 10.
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