The Wedding Night

OK, you want to make Anna Sten a star like Garbo or Deitrich. What are the very worst things you could do? Cast her as a Polish immigrant farm woman. Dress her in frumpy clothes. Set the movie in cold weather, necessitating her wearing a hat or scarf much of the time. Cast the urbane Ralph Bellamy as her rough-hewn Polish fiancé.

Anna Sten had a lovely face and she wasn't a bad actress. But this vehicle could have sunk any unknown. On the other hand, it's not a bad movie. In some ways, it's memorable.

The male lead is Gary Cooper, in his early days when his lashes were long, his look lanky but gentle. He's very good as a writer who's hit a brick wall with his work. He and wife Helen Vinson are splitsville, or near it; so he goes to his family house in Connecticut. And there he meets Sten, who is delivering milk. (No comment.) I never got the whole big deal about Garbo. Sten is more emotive. But she's sunk in this movie.

Gary Cooper, in a thinly veiled characterization of F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a writer living with a socialite wife in New York City and doing quite well on the party circuit. But he's lost his muse and literally has to move back to his family's ancestral home in Connecticut where the rent is free.

While there he gets involved with some Polish immigrants who have bought a lot of acreage in the Nutmeg state for tobacco growing and farmer Jean Hersholt wants some of Cooper's land. Needing the cash, Cooper agrees. He finds the people there fascinating in an sociological sort of way. And he finds Hersholt's daughter Anna Sten far more intriguing.

The Wedding Night was supposed to be the launching of a new Sam Goldwyn discovery in Anna Sten. But for some reason she didn't catch on with the public though she does give a fine performance. There's a lengthy list of speculative reasons why she never caught on, some have been mentioned by other reviewers.

However the best performance in the film is Helen Vinson as Cooper's wife. She starts off giving the impression she's a flighty airhead, but actually that's not the case. Vinson usually was playing the other woman in her film career, here she reverses type as the wronged wife. You do feel sorry for her, she's done nothing to deserve Cooper's infidelity.

For those who are curious about Anna Sten as she's become something of a symbol as to how not to showcase a talent, The Wedding Night might be worth a look.

Nothing gets a woman's heart pumping a little quicker than an early Gary Cooper movie, and The Wedding Night from 1935 is no exception.

Cooper is writer Tony Barratt - think F. Scott Fitzgerald - whose publisher doesn't want his next book and tells him whatever he had, he's lost it. So he and his wife Dora (Helen Vinson) take off for an inherited country home.

Tony becomes intrigued by the family of Polish émigrés who live nearby, particularly the beautiful daughter, Manya Novak (Sten).

Okay, here is something that confuses me. My friends are of Polish descent. They called their sister Mary Manya. So far, so good.

This family's last name is Novak. That's Czech.

And they say Dasvidaniya, which is Russian. Go figure.

Back to the story. After the father (Sig Ruman) buys a field from Tony for $5,000, Dora wants to hightail it back to New York, now that they have some money. Tony decides to stay. He begins writing a book about the family.

He and Manya fall in love, though it's unconsummated. She is engaged to Fredrik Sobieski (Ralph Bellamy) a real bumpkin, whom she doesn't love. When she decides not to marry him, her father has a fit, and the engagement is back on. Meanwhile, Tony wants a divorce.

Bittersweet film with lovely performances by Cooper and Sten. Cooper in the beginning is immaculate in a suit, and he and Dora are part of the high-class social set. He did play many sophisticated roles in the '30s, but Mr. Deeds and westerns would follow. Instead of strong and silent, here he's animated and romantic.

This film was apparently supposed to introduce Anna Sten to American audiences. Sam Goldwyn wanted to build her up as the next Garbo. I don't know about you, but I don't remember Greta Garbo playing a farmer with dowdy clothes. If he was going to build her up, why not showcase her beauty? She was beautiful, and her acting is very good. To me she hasn't the presence of Garbo or Dietrich, but I think Goldwyn could have given her better treatment.

Helen Vinson really has the strongest role, and she was up to it.

Very poignant story, directed by King Vidor, and beautifully photographed.

I had heard about this film and about how underrated it was,then last week i saw a copy of it on ebay on VHS PAL UK.I was really surprised as i didn't think it had ever been released in the UK.It must be one of the rarest videos in Britain as sadly not many people have heard of it.Luckily i won it for just over £3 not bad eh.So if any one else is interested in buying a copy,there must be others available in Britain,if you really look around.I couldn't wait to watch this film,and i must say i wasn't disappointed.Its starts off a mildly amusing story that suddenly gets sadder and sadder until it reaches a climax to a very tragic ending.I must admit the last 10 seconds of this film does bring tears to the eyes,i wont say why,but try and see this movie and you will see.The acting between Gary Cooper and Anna Sten is first rate,her character is very likable as she is totally unselfish,and is trying to please everyone,so she does deserve happiness.Garys character,well he is married and his wife is not a monster and she does love him,so you feel sorry for her as well,i think you have to decide for yourself in a triangle like this someone is always going to get hurt,but you don't know who.Also this is a very early film showing us cultural differences and the sort of conflicts that can arise when two people from very different back grounds want to be together.Can it work?he is from a literate sophisticated family,she is from a poor immigrant family that is still trying to learn new ways.The answer is if two people really love each other then they can over come their differences as true love conquers all,i think overall this was the strongest message that comes out of this film,to some people the married issue may be the point of the film.Any way this is a very haunting film and well worth watching if you get the chance.

Yesterday I re-watched "The Wedding Night" (1935), this time with my wife who had never seen it before. For me it was like watching it all over again for the first time. I think that this happens with great pictures, like this one. She also loved the film and I felt so gratified by that, because sadly this type of quiet, sensitive films is not the kind of film which you can watch with anybody and can be fully appreciated as it should be.

I'm a fan of "the Gary Cooper" of the late '20s and 1930s, in my opinion some his best films were made around this time, before his definitive screen persona was established, especially in the early thirties. He gives a sensitive, balanced, nuanced, performance in a film that looks like a slice of life. His character is so unarchetypical, so honestly portrayed by him, that you get immersed totally in this beautiful love story. And this is no by chance, because the film was directed by the masterful King Vidor.

Praise must also go to the two actresses that vividly portray the two women in Cooper's life: the unjustly forgotten and underrated Russian actress Anna Sten and the equally unfairly forgotten actress Helen Vinson. Miss Vinson portrays without falling in the caricature, a shallow, but at the same time likable society woman, who thinks that life is a never-ending party and does not take marriage as seriously as it should be taken, realizing it too late. Miss Sten plays the naïve but strong-willed Polish woman who reluctantly at first, begins to fall for the writer portrayed by Cooper. The scene in which Cooper reads to her the first chapters of the new (autobiographical) book he is writing, is most telling in this aspect; because Miss Sten does not fall for the dashing, tall, handsome Cooper, but for his character's sensitiveness, feelings and emotions which she apprehends by means of this book in progress.

In short, none of the three principals of this story incur in stereotypical portrayals, which helped me to connect with their characters' emotions, with its virtues and flaws.

A wonderful experience, which with no doubt I'll repeat in the future, because this film deserves many viewings and is just my kind of film; a simple love story, unpretentiously directed, that does not aim at over sentimentality and does not fall into the maudlin which can ruin a movie, with superb, unaffected performances by the leads.