While I did laundry and other Sunday chores, I watched two movies.
I began, of course, with RIO RITA. Like that other famous 1929 musical THE COCOANUTS, this movie is primitive and it looks it: scratches, dirt, print damage, muffled sound, tinny sound levels. (Universal has done what it could with THE COCOANUTS to clean it up visually and aurally; RIO RITA hasn't been touched.) The off-stage orchestra drowns out the actors sometimes, especially in the opening scene which is almost totally drowned out by the music being too loud and the microphone over the actors' heads being too far away. The style of acting is totally alien to our time, and the singing actors have to be careful to face front or cheat out to keep the lyrics from getting lost since they are singing live.
But none of it matters. It's an utterly charming example of a period musical with comics that have little or nothing to do with the main story but are there purely for relief from the melodramatic romance and florid singing. John Boles makes a rugged leading man, and Bebe Daniels I'm sure surprised the world with her accomplished singing.
And what surprised me is that though the film is a 1929 musical with mostly static camera set-ups (since the cameras were housed in those sound proof booths), there is some movement - a reverse dolly shot that caught me totally by surprise since everything else seemed to be long shots, medium shots, or close shots in the standard pattern of early talkies.
And the last two reels are in two strip Technicolor that has survived! I wasn't aware that any of it was done in color, and when I saw the Technicolor credit in the main titles, I just knew the segment would be in B&W like "The Wedding of the Painted Doll" is in BROADWAY MELODY. But, no! The color was there!
It was a great first viewing of RIO RITA.