Rafter Romance (1933)

Load of rubbish!!

Absolutely the worst movie.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Breezy lightweight comedy about male/female roommates, Ginger Rogers and Norman Foster, sharing an apartment but never seeing one another due to their work schedules. It's nothing classic, but it's enjoyable enough, largely due to the very likable cast, which also includes George Sidney and Robert Benchley, who also appear in the film.

I first saw RAFTER ROMANCE a few years ago as a break from all the Akira Kurosawa films I'd been watching on TCM. In a rather odd coupling, Turner Classic Movies had decided to play all of the Japanese director's films during its Ginger Rogers Month, and all the promos I'd been seeing about Ginger finally made me decide to take a break from the next modern day Japanese version of HAMLET or KING LEAR or MACBETH (or Gorky's THE LOWER DEPTHS for that matter). Something called RAFTER ROMANCE seemed like it would be quite a contrast. It was, and it was a lot of fun, too.Instead of going over the plot again, I'll mention two scenes. The swastika incident has inspired some comment. The swastika had long been a good luck symbol in much of the world, including among the Hindus as well as the aboriginal American Indians. Clearly the boy is using it as such in the scene in RAFTER ROMANCE. It's not surprising that an adolescent wouldn't have been keeping up with the contemporary political developments in Europe. His father, however, judging by his accent, must have originally come from the Old World, and it's not unlikely that he would have been familiar with recent European events. Thus the landlord associated the swastika with the Nazis and was unhappy to see it on the walls of his apartments, a reaction that his son did not immediately understand. It seems to me to be a sly political commentary, surely the only one that we see in the charming romcom RAFTER ROMANCE.True the plot about two people sharing an apartment without ever meeting one another doesn't make any sense (what happens on weekends or holidays?), but how many airtight plots do we ever come across? RAFTER ROMANCE moves quickly, contains likable characters, has some genuinely funny scenes (anything featuring Laura Hope Crews, anything featuring the telemarketing office, Ginger's 'date' with Robert Benchley), a few that aren't so funny but nothing that is notably awful, and a pair of leads (Ginger Rogers and Norman Foster) who fit easily together in what is their third and last movie as co-stars. Though there's considerable talent all around her, it's Rogers who holds it all together, and RKO must have been very pleased in seeing what they had in her.Though it's a small, simple picture, RAFTER ROMANCE does supply some surprises. Did you know there were telemarketing companies in 1933? I sure didn't. Neither their spiel nor the reactions to their cold calling seems to have changed much. But most surprising was that shower scene, or I should say the prelude to it. When Ginger slipped off the jacket of that business suit she was wearing my jaw dropped at the sight of her bare back! I mean, no blouse underneath, only a silk scarf crossing over her breasts? Somehow I doubt that was a common costume for the well-dressed office girl of 1933, but I guess that's why they call them pre-Code!

A far-fetched set-up is in order for this romantic comedy similar to "The Shop Around the Corner", about two people who meet, at first can't stand each other, and eventually discover that they are connected in a rather unique way. He's a night security guard who needs a place to sleep during the day (apparently working seven days a week) so landlord George Sidney convinces broke tenant Ginger Rogers to share her apartment with him, she working by day while he sleeps, and him gone when she gets home. By chance, they meet each other (not knowing what their shared apartment roommate looks like) and slowly fall in love after a shaky start.A breezy pre-code comedy with some nice art direction for the apartment, witty dialog and a fabulously comic Laura Hope Crews as a clumsy drunken slob, this is memorable for a sequence where Rogers strips down to her lingerie, revealing a lot and hiding little. Rogers shines in scenes where she's promoting the refrigerators she's trying to sell, and sarcastically dealing with the eccentrics around her. Foster, better known as one of Claudette Colbert's husbands and Loretta Young's brother-in-law, is a light-hearted romantic lead who holds his own against the rising star Rogers who was about to shoot to the top of the box office as the dancing partner of Fred Astaire. In spite of the illogical premise, the film is quite enjoyable, much so that RKO remade it only three years later as the weaker "Living on Love". Crews's character, obviously a wealthy alcoholic out to make Foster her paid lover, played a similar character in the Bob Hope comedy "Thanks for the Memory", and her character bears more than a passing resemblance to the more sophisticated character that Patricia Neal played in "Breakfast at Tiffany's".

It's the depression and everyone is hard up except the very wealthy. (Plus ca change...) Ginger Rogers is a working girl forced to share an attic or loft with Norman Foster, an artist who refuses to take any money from the society matron (Laura Hope Crews) who pursues him. George Sidney is Mr. Eckbaum, the slightly frantic landlord who tries to keep everything going. He arranges it so that Rogers, who is a telephone salesgirl by day, and Foster, who has a job as a night watchman, never meet. Trying to keep the place "respectable," you know.Well, the two roomies who don't know each other take a long time to meet. In the meantime, leaving nasty notes for one another and playing painful pranks, each comes to loathe the other.But -- guess what! -- they meet accidentally outside their attic, assume false identities for different reasons, and fall for each other. This plot, I'm sure, goes back farther than "You've Got Mail" or "The Shop Around the Corner." I honestly don't know how far back in the mists of ancient history it goes. When did they invent rentals? It's a bit slow at first. George Sidney is funny, though, as the wisecracking Jewish landlord. His son Julius brings him a bowl of noodle soup for the famished Rogers but spills some on the carpet. "Ahh, next time I ask you for TWO bowls of zoop -- one for the lady and one for the carpet." If you don't think that's funny, I ought to warn you that that's about as good as it gets.Robert Benchley is in it too, as the amorous boss of Rogers at the Icy Air Refrigerator Company, but his particularly Ivy League brand of humor may be an acquired taste. Except for "Foreign Correspondent," come to think of it, where his non sequiturs were superb. Guinn (Big Boy) Williams also appears in the small role of a comic taxi driver.Foster isn't much of an actor but Ginger Rogers is delightfully piquant as a tough but vulnerable proletarian. She has a wonderful figure, which she gets to display, but her movements are stiff and no one could have predicted that within the next few years she would be a partner in the most famous dancing team in the world.Everything about the movie is smooth and logical and never rises above the level of "nice" -- slightly amusing, slightly warm, and with a happy ending.