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...o cuando las diosas eran niñas.
Rita Hayworth sólo tenía 8 años, cuando rodó este cortometraje, bailando con su padre. Pero está caracterizada de tal manera que parece una mujer adulta.
A pesar de su corta edad, demuestra ya un talento muy desarrollado para la danza.
La pieza es de lo más interesante además, ya que se trata de una filmación sonora de 1926 (anterior a "El cantor de Jazz" (1927), la primera película sonora).
Antes de estrenar The Jazz Singer en 1927, la Warner hizo algunos cortos de prueba con sonido y este es uno de ellos, por lo que efectivamente no es muda. Lo que no me creo es lo de Rita, que cuando se rodó este corto tenía 7-8 añitos. Así que, salvo que se vea una niña por algún lado, me temo que no
It's difficult to figure out exactly what the purpose of this short was. If it was designed to serve as both a showcase for opera diva Anna Case and an example of what talkies could do, it fails miserably on both counts; Miss Case doesn't even appear until about five minutes into the film. The intervening time was taken up by a musical number by the background chorus and a dance number by the Cansinos (future sex goddess Rita Hayworth and her father), both of which were ruined by a combination of poor sound and incredibly inept staging by the director (who, justifiably, received no screen credit). He kept the entire number in one static long shot; the camera was so far away from the principals that no one was recognizable, and since many of the actors were costumed similarly, it was difficult to see when someone was actually moving. When the director finally did cut to a medium shot, instead of moving the camera with the dancers, he had the annoying habit of letting them move to the extreme left or right of the screen, then having the camera chase after them. It was not only distracting but self-defeating, as it completely ruined the fluidity and tempo of the scene. When Miss Case finally did appear on screen she was, frankly, unimpressive. She did have a beautiful voice, as you would expect from an opera singer, but she had no screen presence whatsoever, and for some reason was very heavily made up, which was especially evident when you compared her to two female extras standing in back of her during her aria.
This short can serve as a curio, but is so poorly made and incompetently staged, with such bad sound quality, that a curio is about the only thing it's good for.