Quiet Wedding

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 135, 23 January 1942, Page 14

Quiet Wedding

(Paramount British)

| [Tt is as pleasant as it is rare, and pleasant because it is rare, to encounter a film like Quiet Wedding in whith a

critic’s .task is not to pick holes but to find words of praise adequate to express his’ enjoyment. In this case the task is made more difficult by the fact that Quiet Wedding depends fer its success less on the material from which it is constructed than on the way in which that material is put together. In other words (and the words are inadequate) atmosphere counts for much more than narrative. The film has a style or flavour of its own, and one cannot hope to appreciate a style or a flavour simply by reading about it. I might, as another critic did, liken the quality of Quiet Wedding to that deliciously piquant French novel Clochemerle, in which a Most riotous storm arose in a village teacup (well, hardly a teacup!) and spread far and wide, or perhaps to the film Storm in a Teacup in which much enjoyable ado was also made about nothing. Or I might go even farther back and recall that early Korda comedy with Roland Young, Wedding Rehearsal, which depicted the impact of an impending marriage on a choice collection of humorous characters. But you still wouldn’t have had more than a whiff of the orange-blossom from Quiet Wedding. Here then is a world, a pre-war, selfcontained world, which is, one feels, as authentically English as the jokes in Punch. Like Punch, the film pokes furl at county types and social customs; but it does more than that: there is a keen edge © of social satire to the humour, the farce is barbed with a malicious irony, so that half the laugh is turned against the whole artificial social unit, the whole semitidiculous code of " respectable" behaviour, which Punch itself so indefatigibly represents. The other part of the laugh, of course, is against the rather likeable absurdity of the human animal almost anywhere, who regards the fact that a boy and girl have decided to live together legally as the pretext for a fantastic orgy of junketing, dressing up, eating, drinking, sniggering, leering, giving and taking Presents, back~-slapping, and speechmaking. In brief, a wedding. It was, of course, to have been a "quiet wedding," and what actual plot there is in the film concerns itself with the effect of all this preparation and lip-smacking anticipation upon the two who should be most intimately concerned-the bride and bridegroom, victims on the altar of ancient custom-when, news of their engagement having spread through the village like wildfire, practically every im habitant, from the parson to the porter, feels called upon to take a hand in seeing to it that the lovers are properly wedded j and bedded. Small wonder really that the bride (Margaret Lockwood), a sensitive youngster, shrinks from the mild atrocities committed in the sacred name of tradition, exclaims "It’s horrible! All they’re thinking about is the wedding night!" and almost decides that there will

be no wedding. And, with customary ininjustice, it is of course her fiancé (Derek Farr), who bears Ge brunt of her revolt. Anthony Asquith has never made a better film than this. In the village and in the country house, swarming with relatives and well-wishers attracted by the scent of orange-blossom, there is one delicious character-study after another; and while I give the players much credit for their performances I must give just as much to Asquith for the way he has handled them, the way he has*fitted each cameo so perfectly into its setting-Mar--jorie Fleming as the mother in full cry toward the kill (an awesome study in single minded sentimental purpose); Athene Seyler as the understanding aunt; Hay Petrie as the railway porter; Frank Cellier as the bridegroom’s father, the only intruder from the outside world into the matrimonial beehive of the village; and many others, far too many to mention-friends of the bride, friends of the groom, in-laws, hangers-on, policemen, pump gossips, bridesmaids, ushers -who, under Asquith’s guidance, make Quiet Wedding such a feast of caricature and wit. It was encouraging to me, because it was further evidence that critics are not always the high-brow minority we are popularly supposed to be, to discover from the comments of those about me in the theatre and of others to whom I have since spoken, that everybody seems to enjoy Quiet Wedding as h as I did. This may have had to do with it: that although the film was made in England in the midst of war, there is absolutely nothing in it to. remind one of the fact. ~