Rio Rita (1929)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

"Rio Rita" should be required viewing for all film studies classes--not as an example of quality, but as an exercise in identifying all the mistakes that were made in its production. In 1929, the nascent talkie industry was on a steep curve to understand and perfect the medium. They used former silent film stars. And they imported vaudeville acts, stage actors and opera stars--anyone with experience using his voice before audiences. And in this case, they imported an entire Broadway musical produced by Flo Ziegfeld. This film says as much about the sad quality of Broadway at the time as it does about Hollywood's first stumbling steps into the sound era. The good news is that the industry learned quickly and in only a few years, genuine classics were being produced in large quantities.In the meantime, some very uneven films were produced, like this one. It opens in Fremont, a small town along the Rio Grande, where cowboys in full western regalia rub elbows with men in tuxedos and flappers while watching a vaudeville-style act on a stage in the local saloon. Presumably the formally-attired swells in the audience rode their horses into town.Then the action crosses the river into Mexico, where the women who aren't dressed as flappers wear colorful fiesta wear and sombreros. Later, a scene takes place on a "pirate barge" parked on the southern side of the river. I am not making this up.I can say a couple of nice things about this pre-Code film. Some of the actors are attractive. After the criminals rob the local bank, they sing love songs in the garden of Senorita Rita's hacienda. And this film would be a rich vein for MST3000.As the singing Rangers search for the dangerous villain/bank robber known as "The Kinkajou", we can ask ourselves why a vicious bandit is named after a nocturnal arboreal mammal that eats mostly fruit? I guess "The Sloth" was already taken.We can also occupy our time enumerating the qualities of this film that leave much to be desired, like:*The sound quality. And I am not just referring to the aged quality of the sound. Dialogue competes with orchestral background music, for example.*The acting. Actors give speeches while the extras draw focus and otherwise look like planted palms around a stage.*The songs. There are some real stinkers in this collection. Consider: "Rootin' pals, tootin' pals..."*Costuming. Some of it looks amateurish. In other instances--as mentioned earlier--there are clashes of styles within the same scene.*Shaky camera work. They were still learning how to move cameras. Also, people's heads were cut off.*Bad singing. The voices are okay, but there is something wrong when a love song is delivered with the two vocalists generally ignoring each other.*Bad dancing, bad choreography. Here, I do not mean to single out this film. This was par for the course in all films of the time.*A disjointed mixing of genres. This film wants to be a musical, but it is also a western, an opera, a Ziegfeld extravaganza complete with aerial shots, a comedy including entire vaudeville acts dropped into the script. It also includes some tap dancing.On a positive note, I liked most of Dorothy Lee's performance as Dolly Bean, the woman who mistakenly weds a married man. She tries to rise above the material.

Most old films noted as "of historical interest only" are actually very entertaining. "Rio Rita" is not. It is one of the better examples of the "historically interesting" film. It's also helpful if you view it as a extravagantly filmed stage production. The 1927-28 stage musical, produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, was a colossal success. And, the too long film version was voted 1927's fourth "Best Picture", in the annual poll conducted by "Film Daily". The opportunity to see "Rio Rita" on screen, in partial color, with popular Bebe Daniels (as Rita Ferguson) in her first speaking (and singing) role, proved irresistible at the box office. Ms. Daniels did not equal her 1920s silent successes, but extended her popularity into the early "talkie" era. Check out the debuting comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey (with Dorothy Lee) in "Hips, Hips, Hooray!" for a better representation of their work.***** Rio Rita (1929) Luther Reed ~ Bebe Daniels, Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey

Early talkie with musical interludes. In Mexico people are looking for the bandit Kinkajou. Many people believe it is the brother of the lovely and popular Rio Rita (Bebe Daniels). Looking for him is dashing Captain Stewart (John Boles) and evil General Ravanoff (Georges Renavent). The "comedy" team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey provide some astonishingly unfunny routines.Historically this is important. It was one of the first talkies and the last half hour is in color. But it's really pretty bad. The plot itself is creaky and the sound recording is terrible (but that can be excused). The songs and dancing themselves aren't bad (for 1929) but the movie is slow-moving and pretty boring. I find it hard to believe this movie was actually 30 minutes longer! Good acting doesn't help much. Also the comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey pop up. They were pretty big in the 1920s and 30s but they're virtually unknown today. Considering their material in this I can see why! Their comedy is downright painful--I groaned aloud at some of the lines. It reached the point that I was fast forwarding through their "comedy" bits. To make things worse the final half hour is in very washed out color. So, film buffs might want to watch for historical purposes but it's a real long haul. I give it a 4.

The Kinkajou dance lead by Dorothy Lee is a gem. Dorothy Lee has a white 10 gal. hat on an 8 gal. head, curtesy of a prop man with a strange sense of humor, and looks a bit like a mushroom but it only makes the dance more fun as she tries to keep it on. I wish this part was shown more often with the film.