Marry Me

If their success rate in matching compatible clients seen in this portmanteau film structured around a marriage bureau is anything to go by it's hardly surprising the two elderly sisters running it are still spinsters!

The whimsical captions in this late Gainsborough production introducing the main characters - and the fact that one of them is played by Guy Middleton - leads one to expect a comedy, but only two of the four episodes are explicitly played for laughs. The picture as a whole (and a memorable cameo by a lonely Alison Leggett) paints a very stark picture indeed of life in postwar austerity London.

An unbilled Albert Lieven is supposedly transformed into a slimy Frenchman by slicked-back hair and the addition of a moustache; while it was presumably that he remembered her from this that later encouraged director Terence Fisher to cast Carol Marsh as Lucy in 'Dracula'.

David Tomlinson is a reporter. His latest assignment is a marriage bureau run by two elderly sisters in London. His method is to apply to them as an Australian.

It's a collection of four or five romances, some comedic, like Tomlinson's with Carol Marsh, some dramatic. The would-be newlyweds are mostly young and attractive players under contract to the Rank organization, like Susan Shaw, Zena Marshall and Guy Middleton. Terrence Fisher directs competently from a script by Lewis Gilbert and Denis Waldock.

Will Jack have his Jill, the man his mare again? Well, what do you expect?

This is a perfectly nice, mindless kind of movie, something to watch while you're ironing. Typical of its blandness, the cad is Guy Middleton, the poor man's Terry-Thomas, and one of the women is a night-club hostess. Although there is no suggestion that she is a prostitute--indeed, all her circumstances indicate that she isn't--the movie more or less treats her as one. Of four matches, two are silly, and two are serious.

As always in this type of movie, the social details are fascinating--women's fashions (ranging from lovely to bizarrely hideous), prices and wages, standards of sexual sophistication, servants' relations with masters. The stories are not terribly believable, though--two men are nice-looking, two handsome, and all four, with good manners and character, fall in love with their assigned mates (all attractive women) quickly. Tell THAT to the Marines!

The script is pleasant rather than comic, but every now and then there is an amusing or bizarre line to keep your interest, such as the reporter's saying, when his editor tells him, "Don't let them know you work here": "I don't let my mother know I work here."

This is a type of film that was popular in the forties and fifties.It centres around a marriage bureau and the people who belong to it.David Tomlinson,a journalist is assigned to write a story about it.So he goes undercover and joins the bureau.It is no surprise that he finds romance.The story featuring Guy Middleton is supposed to be slightly numerous.The problem is that none of the stories are very interesting.