SamPamBam There are movies that are meant to make you think, and movies meant to shock and keep you in suspense. Forget that. This is pure entertainment. Wonderfully cast, beautiful sets and art direction...and then, the dance. The magnificent Night and Day is meant to be absorbed and cherished as that one moment when everything was perfect. Just enjoy. Nothing recent comes close.

kz917-1 It's true the best things happen when you're dancing!Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers star in the film that won the first Oscar for Best Song - The Continental.Ginger stars as Mimi, a woman seeking a divorce from her absentee husband. Her Aunt makes arrangements to have it appear as though there has been impropriety. It is ASSUMED that Fred Astaire is the "arrangement" and calamities follow, along with lots of dancing of course.Cute. Worth the rental!

mmallon4 I had a period in which I was infatuated with the greatness that is Fred Astaire & Ginger Rodgers. Prior to this I often heard of them but I was occupied with later film musical of the 50's. When I checked them out for myself I got it, oh boy did I get it. When together dancing or not, Fred and Ginger are in a world of their own and everyone else ceases to exist. Just look as Night & Day (my favourite Astaire and Rodger's number), what could be more spellbinding? The Gay Divorcée is my favourite Astaire & Rodgers picture. This was their first film together as lead and yet a feel it gets everything right and I consider it a much better film than Top Hat which itself I find overrated.I find the humour of The Gay Divorcée is more creative than that of Top Hat. Take the sequence in which Astaire finds Rodger in London by near impossible luck, then the two engage in a car chase into the country side (how often do you get a car chase in a 30's musical), and then in a wacky races type moment he goes ahead or Rodgers and gets road closed sign out of nowhere in order to stop her. Astaire's stalker attitude could come off as creepy but he is charming enough to get away with it, making this moments morbidly funny. This whole sequence is so surreal and plays like a live action cartoon, as if the filmmakers are making fun of the film's own highly improbably mistaken identity plot. This is much more clever than the handling of the mistaken identity plot in Top Hat. I don't mean to completely undo Top Hat, I think it's a good movie, just whatever Top Hat did I can't help but feel The Gay Divorcée did much better. I've always championed Astaire's unsung abilities as a comedian. His timing and line delivery is easily on par with the likes of Cary Grant; I wish he could have appeared in some non musical comedies. Ginger Rodgers usually had a female companion throughout the series and I think Alice Brady is the best of them all with her histrionics; the sound of her voice alone cracks me up. The Gay Divorcée may have slipped through the recently instated production code. If not then it certainty feels like a pre-code film, with sexual tension throughout and an air of scandalousness to the whole thing.Fred and Ginger, they where gods!

esmondj Most of these reviews don't appear to understand the plot. As the law in England then stood, the only reliable way to get a divorce was on the grounds of adultery, which required citing a co-respondent (not 'correspondent'), who was required to have been discovered in flagrante delicto with the marriage partner, i.e. having breakfast in the same room. This was usually delegated to a professional co-respondent such as depicted in this movie, who was certainly not a 'would-be Latin lover' at all but just a guy hired to do a job and be seen by a chambermaid at a legally appropriate time.Stunning movie, perhaps my favourite of the series, with the unsurpassed 'Night and Day' number and an excellent large-scale production number for the Continental, using every inch of a vast RKO Big White Set, although it isn't quite as big as it appears in one shot: look for a bit of matte work.