Soir de noces

Tony is a writer and can't get his latest book published in NYC so he and his wife go to a farmhouse he inherited in Connecticut where it'll be cheaper to live. While in Connecticut, he meets his Polish neighbors and their daughter, Manja. While Tony's wife is away and his cook has left him in the dead of winter, Manja helps Tony around the house and provides inspiration for his latest book. An attraction grows stronger, but Manja's hand in marriage is promised to a local farmer. Can two people promised to others and from very different worlds be happy? How will the book end? Film focuses strongly on Tony and Manja, but could have rounded out the wife's character a bit more - overall an enjoyable film but the ending's a bit melodramatic as most were for the time.

In New York, the writer Tony Barrett (Gary Cooper) was successful in his first novel. Now he is alcoholic and his two next books were failures. His publisher refuses to publish his last novel and the totally broken Tony is forced to move with his wife Dora (Helen Vinson) to the countryside of Connecticut to his family farmhouse. On the arrival, his neighbors Mr. Jan Novak (Siegfried Rumann) and his daughter Manya (Anna Sten) offer five thousand dollars for his idle lands. Tony accepts the offer and Dora decides to return to New York. Tony stays with his servant Taka and has dinner with the Novak family to close the business. When Taka decides to return to New York, Manya helps Tony with the housekeeping. They become close to each other and soon they fall in love with each other. But Tony is a married man and Manya is engaged to Fredrik Sobieski (Ralph Bellamy) in an arranged marriage. What will happen to their love?

"The Wedding Night" is a sad and tragic romance directed by King Vidor, who was a specialist in melodramas. The timeless love story is believable and engaging and has a heartbreaking conclusion. Based on the number of voters (553) and reviews (20), "The Wedding Night" is an unknown romance and the User Rating (6.8) is underrated. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "A Noite Nupcial" ("The Wedding Night")

Interesting film, partly because Cooper is cast so completely against the type he is later to be best known for from his Capra films - that is of the rural innocent encountering the corruption of the city. This movie is much more in the transcendental tradition of Henry Hathaway's Peter Ibbetson, also starring Cooper and released the same year. I had never heard of Anna Sten but according to the posts she was a protégé of Samuel Goldwyn in one of her first Hollywood films. She does remind me of a fresh-faced Garbo. Overall the acting is fine and characters are complex, and the direction is up to King Vidor's high standards.

A fine film. The ending in particular is bittersweet.

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.

Here is Gary Cooper in one of his more authentically romantic screen roles.

By romantic I do not mean the stale bourgeois antics of the matinee idol, but a figure that is, at once, poetic and transgressive. Cooper plays a married man who, during a stay in the country, falls in love with a farm girl. She belongs to a family of recent immigrants. They do not see her involvement with a married man not of their ethnic world at all positively. The ending is tragic, but the power of their transfiguring involvement is very convincingly portrayed, and the photography has real class. Cooper acts with an open intensity not often available to the clichéd strong-inarticulate American male. If you are bored by his "High Noon" persona, see this film.