georgewilliamnoble The least remembered of the Astaire & Rogers pictures and their only film based on real people it was their RKO swansong released in 1939. My dear Mum would watch all the Astaire Rogers films when on TV and i vividly recall watching this as a child in our prefab when TV was still new. This DVD viewing was my first since those long ago days. The reason is that it's down beat ending has stuck with me for all these years and to be frank when i watch any musical i mostly want to be uplifted. What i now know of the Castle's and their Pre great war fame i have learned only from Wiki the online encyclopedia and no more. Given that i am writing this review 40 years after the death of Elvis Presley the movie has made me think about the nature of fame and how it can last for some but fade out for others. Also it is 100 years since the events of the great war, the scars of which still run deep for Europe and the United States. So this musical biopic is very timely as a window into those dark days though made 20 years later, just as the world prepared to do it all again.As for the RKO musical film itself, i think it has stood the test of time very well, it packs an astonishing amount into just 93 minutes and benefits from the remarkable chemistry between its popular dancing stars and the popular music of those times are still known to me and i'm sure a great many others.Perhaps only fans of the golden age of Hollywood would want to watch this film today, but i found it to be entertaining interesting and informative of an era long now gone.

l_rawjalaurence Viewers expecting a reprise of some of the great Astaire/Rogers vehicles of the mid-Thirties are likely to be disappointed with H. C. Potter's biopic. This is a low-key retelling of the life of two great ballroom dancers, with the emphasis placed on their life after marriage. There are a few incongruities: Astaire makes no attempt to portray Vernon as an Englishman (who was actually born in Norwich in the east of the country), even though he is shown to be joining the army during the First World War. Their general factotum Walter (Walter Brennan) was in reality an African American, but in Potter's film the role has been transformed into a comic foil for Astaire and Rogers, rather like that of Edward Everett Horton in their musicals earlier on in the decade.The dance-sequences are low-key, but reveal Astaire and Rogers' talent for taking on all types of dance. They glide across the screen like sylphs - as with all of their movies, they ooze style. One wonders why the comic Lew Fields (playing himself in the movie) declined to take them on in his show early on in their careers; and why he believed (quite erroneously) that Vernon was a better comedian than he was a dancer.Director Potter makes considerable use of dissolves, as well as superimposed sequences where the couple are shown rather like phantoms dancing across the screen. This is especially evident at the end, where Irene remembers those wonderful days when the two of them were performing in Paris, just after her husband's unfortunate death in an air crash has been announced. Rogers' performance is especially memorable at this point, as she battles to keep calm, despite her emotional traumas.Astaire seems a little constricted in this film - although he has one or two moments of comic repartee with Brennan, he does not appear especially comfortable in the flying sequences, either in the air or on the ground. It's obvious that he misses his dancing shoes. As other reviewers have remarked, THE STORY OF VERNON AND IRENE CASTLE takes certain liberties with the truth about their biographical subjects' lives. But then perhaps we should see it not as a biopic, but as a deliberate coda to Astaire and Rogers' career at RKO - as the two of them are seen dancing into the distance at the end of the film, we realize that this is the end of an era. Although the two of them were reunited in MGM's THE BARKLEYS OF Broadway a decade later, they could never recapture the magic of their RKO canon.

TheLittleSongbird A lovely film in many ways. The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle looks classy, the costumes(Ginger's dresses are to die for) and sets are very sumptuous and the whole film is shot beautifully and with great care. The score is sensitive and fitting to the story, while the period songs are an absolute pleasure to hear(admittedly though the Yamma Yamma song is one that you can take or leave). The choreography dazzles and amuses in equal measure, bringing up fond memories of Fred and Ginger and the Castles. The script is on the most part well-meaning and intelligent with some nice wit too, though the double entendres in the Dutch cap scene did fall flat, and the story is wholly believable, nicely paced and has a powerful emotional impact, especially the poignant ending. Story-wise The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle contains easily the best story of any of Fred and Ginger's RKO films, which is saying a lot seeing as the story was always the least memorable component of their films and was overridden by everything else generally being so good. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' dancing is as always impeccable, while it is a slightly different style you see them do here there is the sense instead that they've been doing it for years. Both Fred and Ginger are cleverly cast, even if they don't look anything like Vernon and Irene Castle, and are wonderful in chemistry and individual performances, Ginger especially is incredibly touching. Walter Brennan is excellent too, funny and sympathetic, and Edna May Oliver equally impresses, she relishes her comic lines while also being touchingly restrained too. All in all, a really good film, the most underrated of Fred and Ginger's 9 RKO pictures and for this viewer one of their better ones too. They would team up 10 years later for the Barkleys of Broadway, which is still an enjoyable film but the weakest of their 10 overall outings together. 9/10 Bethany Cox

richard-1787 I can see how fans of the previous Astaire - Rogers musicals would have been disappointed with this movie. It's really barely a musical - virtually no new musical numbers - and there isn't that much dancing in it. Most of what there is isn't of the sweepingly romantic style that the couple had done so well in their previous movies. This is more of a drama with an occasional dance step and, frankly, not a particularly interesting one, as the Castles, at least as presented here, didn't have any interesting problems in their lives.What I did find interesting was the end, the part devoted to World War I. If you put it in the context of its era - the movie was released in 1939, as war loomed up once again over Europe - the last part can be seen as part of the interventionist propaganda that Hollywood produced from 1939 until Pearl Harbor, and which included such much better pictures as Casablanca, some of Erol Flynn's movies, and even Mrs. Miniver. The joy of the French when America enters the war "because now it will come to a quick end" was certainly meant to suggest that if America only intervened in any new European conflict, it too would end quickly. (That's not how it worked out, but who could have known that in 1939?) There isn't a single memorable number in this movie, either in terms of the music or the dancing. And the story just isn't that interesting. Astaire - Rogers fans could skip this one, as could others, and feel that they have missed very little.