Notte di nozze

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.

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.

Heavy handed dour drama was the last of the big budget films to try and turn Anna Sten, Goldwyn's Folly, into another Garbo. The mistake of that was the actress while not bad, a little overfond of popping her eyes but otherwise fine, isn't suited to that persona. Had they pursued a lighter image for her which she seems inclined to perhaps her career would have fared better in American films. Poor Ralph Bellamy, usually an enjoyable presence in pictures, is made ridiculous by his silly casting as a Polish peasant. Cooper fares better mostly because an accent is not forced upon him and his star power is able to shine through. The person who comes across best even though her character is not the most pleasant is Helen Vinson as Cooper's estranged wife. It is at times confusing since she and Sten bear a strong resemblance to each other a fact not played up in the movie and so it serves no purpose but to distract the audience.

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.

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.