Happy Is the Bride

If you like gentle comedies set in an idealised home counties village peopled by well-spoken, elegant, middle-class people played by cinema stalwarts of the 50s and 60s as I do, then this film ought to be a winner. However, it falls unaccountably flat and is decidedly unfunny. When even Cecil Parker fails to raise a laugh, there is something seriously wrong.

I watched it recently for the first time in many many years and, although I knew it was inferior to the 1941 original Quiet Wedding, had convinced myself that it wasn't that bad and benefitted from modern techniques and the likes of Parker, Carmichael, Grenfell, and Barker but they all seem to be on valium while Athene Seyler comes across as just vile.

A major drawback of course is that Miss Scott is simply not in the same league as the beautiful and bewitching Margaret Lockwood but this doesn't explain the other failings.

A classic tale of the almost inevitable failure of remakes and sequels, though even this isn't as horrendous as Quiet Weekend.

I will just have to keep hoping that a copy of the 1941 version re-surfaces ( I don't really undestand why it seems to have disappeared and hasn't even been on Talking Pictures as far as I recall).

Director Roy Boulting had a hand writing the screenplay for HAPPY IS THE BRIDE, off a play by Esther McCracken. I have long admired Boulting's economic and precise style. His films of the 1950s, in particular, reflect the stoic, quietly comic British approach to film-making at the time.

Director Boulting and the film benefit from the good looking leads - Ian Carmichael and Janette Scott - as the about to get married couple, who throw caution to the wind and spend the night before the wedding under the same roof, but not in the same bed. Both are adorably young and very classy, he in an aristocratic way, she in a middle class way, aspiting to upward mobility.

That said, the truly memorable parts in this film go to Terry-Thomas as the fastidious traffic copper (in my view one of his finest roles with an against type understated approach); Cecil Parker as about to be father of bride Scott; and John Le Mesurier as the groom's dad.

Though somewhat theatrical in parts, and in the dialogue, HAPPY holds up well nearly 70 years after release, with the self-effacing brand of humor that so set British cinema apart from the rest... before the more rambunctious CARRY ON style crept in, and changed British humor into something louder.

Good, professionally done cinematography. 8/10.

No great surprises, but well-played and cheerfully delivered, if somewhat predictable comedy goings on with more British character actors than you can shake a stick at. Cecil Parker is in especially good form and Irene Handl and Joyce Grenfell as always conjour humour out of next to nothing.