The June wedding season is filled with emotion: There's the bliss at the prospect of becoming someone's lifelong partner, and the panic at becoming someone's lifelong partner. Hollywood conveys both the bliss and the panic-and all the emotions in between — in these fine films on the nuptial experience.
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Few Hollywood comedies
are as sophisticated or as funny as this film. Philip Barry's play
gets the royal MGM treatment, with Katharine Hepburn as the
Philadelphia blueblood about to wed for the second time, James
Stewart and Ruth Hussey as unwelcome reporters at the occasion, and
Cary Grant as the first husband who won't go away. George Cukor, the
master of genteel entertainment, directs this wise comedy about the
marital problems of the very rich. A+
Father of the Bride (1950)
The madness of wedding
preparations sets the scene for a classic comedy of anxiety and
aggravation. A young and radiant Elizabeth Taylor gets engaged to the
man of her dreams and inadvertently unleashes a string of monetary
and logistic headaches for her father. As the title character,
Spencer Tracy is perfectly frazzled in this good-hearted send-up of
the American middle-class way of getting married. A
Royal Wedding (1951)
Fred Astaire is a confirmed
bachelor. His sister and hoofing partner, Jane Powell, is a confirmed
flirt. Despite their slippery habits, they both manage to get
themselves hitched while on tour in London during the 1947 wedding of
Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten. The whole experience is
heady enough to send Astaire literally dancing on the ceiling. The
movie is boy-meets-girl formula, but it overcomes the cliches thanks
to Alan Jay Lerner's songs (with Burton Lane) and urbane script and
Astaire's dancing B+
The Catered Affair (1956)
Prenuptial arrangements
take on a desperate edge as a working-class Bronx family grapples
with the demands of a wedding that's beyond their means. Bette Davis
stars as a weary housewife determined to give her daughter (Debbie
Reynolds) the grand affair she never had, even if it decimates her
husband's meager life's savings. Ordinary people wrestling with
mundane problems becomes compelling drama. B+
Lovers and Other Strangers (1970)
An out-of-town wedding
triggers . family and sexual squabbles on both sides of the
matrimonial aisle. In the process, all sorts of human foibles are
skewered. True to the spirit of the Renee Taylor-Joseph Bologna play,
the movie features characters drawn with sharp insight. A great
ensemble cast doesn't hurt either, including Beatrice Arthur, Gig
Young, and Diane Keaton. A
True Love (1989)
Not every engagement deserves to be
carried through to marriage, and this film might serve as a
warning — or as simply a good evening in front of the VCR. A low-budget
seriocomedy set in an Italian enclave of the Bronx, True Loveconcerns the final days before a wedding and the jittery groom's
juvenile antics. Cowriter-director Nancy Savoca has a sure-handed
grasp of her setting and characters. B+
