Best movie of this year hands down!

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

How unpopular have Freud and Jung become in the post-Sex and the City era! Therefore, this films gets panned by the suddenly enlightened "critics". I'll give it a 10 to fix its overall score and for very good reasons: exceptional photography, extraordinary musical numbers that could have been written by the above mentioned geniuses Freud & Jung; great acting, great screenplay, spectacular costumes and sets... Really, is it so offensive that a domineering woman needs a domineering man? I personally enjoyed watching their battle. In the end, she LETS him dominate. Her Mr. Big is such a potty mouth that my jaw dropped at his insolence, but being shocked is such a pleasure - I did not expect it from a Hays Code era movie. Since feminism or misogyny are not and should never be considered art criteria, let's talk about the color palette, the deep, dark blues to pale greens and pinks of our heroine's reality to vibrant blues, gold and white of her dreams in which she dances in white and red princess dresses and her domineering man sports a purple sequined suit and top hat (her prince is busy signing autographs and the married man she wants to marry is her father figure). One needs to know the symbolism of colors - our repulsive Mr. Big who is about to tame our heroine wears a traditional feminist color. And can't freedom also be defined as a lack of fear to be dominated? "Poor is the man (or woman!) whose pleasure depends on the permission of another."

I like this movie. It is confusing and difficult, but you can't help but like it. Ginger Rogers plays a fashion magazine editor...and she finds herself having headaches and feeling dissatisfied. This makes no sense, as she has an exceptional job (especially for 1940) three suitors, and conscious and unconscious lives that are fabulously costumed. She goes to her doctor who recommends a psychiatrist...a drastic move for the time...which she promptly declines...but then does finally go to. Ginger undergoes a great deal of stress in this film,and keeping a bottle of aspirin at hand might be wise. As she makes progress with her shrink...her dream sequences become more and more lavish. The film is beautifully costumed...even clothes left lying on a chair...are fabulous. And there are HATS. HATS. Hats... mousey through military...lots of hats...and FURS...Ginger has one dress with a floor length mink skirt...lined with gold and scarlet sequins, two or three fur coats, a muff, and several other dresses trimmed with fur. Pull the shades and make certain that no one from PETA is around when you run this film. The dream sequences are the real meat of this...they are very beautiful and very surreal. In the end, of course, Ginger selects one of the men (no, not the married one) and seems to be on the road to recovery. You get the feeling that a lot got left out...and I don't know what (yet). I know Danny Kaye was 'discovered' in the Broadway show...and that he had special material. Danny was under contract to Sam Goldwyn by the time this was made...so neither he nor any of his special material made the transition into this film. This film is a visual knock out...and a restored print should be made and hi-def DVD's struck...so we can watch this from time to time. It cannot help but remain dated and politically incorrect....that is the legacy of its 1940 dateline.. but it will certainly always be stunning to look at.

A product of the times but still dreadful! Ginger looking rather mannish (get it?) until she finds a man. Almost all songs deleted except for "Jenny" ("My Ship" which is the crucial key to the solution of her problems was also inexplicably deleted.). Film composers were generally treated like dirt including Leonard Bernstein in "On the Town" with "improvements" by Roger Edens. But this one is the worst! Historically of some interest but still to be avoided.

A Technicolor spectacular, with costumes and wonderful sets to match, but the story isn't much, mostly what you might expect to read in Popular Psychoanalysis magazine.Best are the dream and reverie sequences, especially the trial in the circus ring. These are where the singing and dancing is, but there is not much and what little there is is not very exciting.