A Genteel Black Hole

_{Day 39 of Project Glowing Rectangle, in which I try to divert some of my daily doomscrolling time back towards a more nourishing oblong: Cinema.}

Title: Flying Down to Rio
Director: Thornton Freeland
Writer: Cyril Hume, H.W. Hanemann, Erwin Gelsey
Year: 1933
Country: USA

Format: DVD
Length: 89 minutes
Seen: 22 February 2026
Rewatch

Roger Bond (Gene Raymond) is an orchestra leader with a habit of getting fired from venues for canoodling with the customers. Despite warnings from his bandmate Fred (Fred Astaire), Roger falls for the flirtatious Brazilian heiress Belinha De Rezende (Dolores del Rio) and gets everyone fired yet again. He manages to book a new gig in Rio de Janeiro, planning to track down Belinha and continue their courtship. But the course of true love never did run smooth, and Roger discovers that Belinha is already engaged to his best friend Julio (Paul Roulien).

Flying Down to Rio secured its place in film history by introducing the immortal pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Honestly it’s not got much else going for it! There’s some fun song and dance numbers (I particularly like Ginger’s song ‘Music Makes Me’) but those are few and far between. Most of the runtime is taken up by the rather dull, chemistry-free romance between Raymond and del Rio. There’s also some vintage casual racism and misogyny—which, while not exactly surprising, is especially hard to overlook when the actual plot is so boring. I’d only recommend this for dedicated Fred and Ginger completists!