Bolero is a rather strange film, a spitting-image of its central character Raoul : good-looking, sleek, cold, single-minded - and quite uneasy to love.
Raoul does not have two ideas to drive his life, just one - his obsession to become the most famous cabaret dancer in a place he will own. Equally the film, which "owns" Raoul, is driven by a single purpose, to show whether and how he will fulfill his objective (dream would definitely not be the right word - Raoul is anything but a dreamer, there is not an ounce of poetry in his brain).
Not surprisingly, love is what could mainly deviate Raoul's and the film's obdurate trajectories. Not really so, because they leave little real room for it. Women love Raoul - though it is hard to understand what they find in him beyond his good looks and sentiment-free winning smile. Raoul does not love women, he just loves himself. Or more precisely there is no room in his heart for anything but self-centered ambition. Dancing lady partners, who with boring regularity fall passionately and possessively for him, are brief one-sided stories - just temporary useful instruments to further his career and then to be discarded, preferably quickly so as not to create deep attachments, as disposable as paper tissues.
And when real love, or what looks like it, knocks at Raoul's door in the shapely shape of equally hard-headed Helen, he is as slow to recognize it as he is fast to throw it away inadvertently later on. Without saying too much, it is not even clear that he experiences real regrets about it - did he lose the love of his life, or just his best dancing partner?
Whichever the case, another event - wholly unexpected that one -, World War I, then invites itself into the plot to derail Raoul's life plan more surely and inexorably than love ever could. And the film decides to make him even less sympathetic, if that is possible, in war than in love. When he hears the news about the war declaration, he abruptly cuts short his big number to announce to large public applause that he will enlist in the Belgian army (yes, believe it or not, here George Raft is supposed to play a Belgian immigrant in the US); but he immediately disappoints Helen by informing her that new-found patriotism had nothing to do with his spectacular decision, he just designed it as a clever publicity stunt to be used within one or two weeks, when he comes back from the victoriously-ended war... A tightly-edited one-minute graphic rendition of the long years of gory slaughterhouse which were WWI is then used, very insensitively, as a kind of ironic plot foil to punish Raoul for his poorly-calculated hubris. Nor has this eye-opening experience of collective suffering made Raoul less self-centered and cold-hearted.
In a post-Hollywood production, this story could have served as a study of a deeply-flawed egotistical character. One can strongly doubt that this was the main intention of this film, and if it had been neither the simplistic script nor the narrow range of George Raft's acting would have served it well. As to Carole Lombard, she gets an acceptable but far from fascinating part. Helen starts as a strong-willed but none too lovable character either - an equal of Raoul in cold-blooded ambition, though hers does not pursue any specific purpose other than social climbing. She then softens just to fall into Raoul's extended arms, thus becoming nicer but also losing any originality she might have had - not counting the fact that Raoul has not obviously become a more loving and lovable person. And then, when her eyes finally open to the fact he is still the same, she drops him for a bland but truly-loving British lord. That's the moment in the film when she fully earns the viewer's sympathy, especially as the story later avoids one pitfall of a cliche, having her to regret having left. She does not - nor should she. Still, for admirers of Carole Lombard, this shallow and mostly humorless story is perfectly watchable but it offers her one of the least interesting roles in her career.
A last word on the musical side. Despite its numerous dancing numbers, the film does not impress as a musical. There is a strangely suggestive one in the middle called The Fan by a specialty dancer which clearly indicates that at the time of Bolero the Hays Code was not in full swing - apparently it was considered fairly scandalous at the time. Another reminder of the period is the way Raoul orders Helen to strip down in her lingerie in order to prove her dancing abilities - he even tells her that for what he cares she could dance naked, which leaves the definitely un-prudish Carole Lombard very unaffected. There are a number of duets, none too sophisticated when Lombard is the partner as she is not an experienced dancer. The exception being the promised Ravel's Bolero which titles and concludes the film, in which professional dancers are obviously substituted in the most difficult parts - it is not bad, though it pales when compared with the enthralling much later version of Maurice Bejart.
And then there is the opening number of George Raft as a virtuoso hoofer, which he indeed had been in real life. Despite its complete lack of any artistic ambition this is the only number I found rather enjoyable, especially his worried looks towards the unappreciative public - this is ironic as it is also the only time when he is booed by the public, for lack of an attractive feminine partner. It also determines the future of Raoul as he says "never more", and concludes that unfortunately for him, women will have to be a necessary prop on his path towards higher aims.
A real nice ladies' man...
