THEY ALL KISSED THE BRIDE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 193, 5 March 1943, Page 13

THEY ALL KISSED THE BRIDE

(Columbia)

|F I had gone to the theatre in ignorance of what was on and had missed the credit titles, I could have sworn

that this was an M-G-M picture. It wasn’t, but I still could have sworn. There, for a start, were those indigenous M-G-M stars, Joan Crawford and Melvyn Douglas, not to mention Ronald Young and Billie Burke; there was the old familiar society set-up; and there was the story-stop me if you’ve heard this one-about the Ruthless Big Business Woman who, under the influence of love, becomes just plain: Woman (well, hardly plain; Joan Crawford is never that). The chief agent in. the softening-up process is Melvyn Douglas as a crusading author, whose original intention is to publish a book \exposing the callous commercial practices of the heroine, but who loses that désire as soon as he sets eyes on her. It is then revealed that Joan Crawford’s pose as a domineering masculine type is due to the fact that she’s really afraid of men, and that Melvyn Douglas poses as a lady-killer, because in his heart of hearts he is afraid of women. Anybody who cares to apply this ingenious theory to me and my dislike for a certain type of film is welcome to try. The title, by the way, is practically meaningless. And so far as plot and treatment go, I have seldom seen a more impossible proposition put. over less plausibly or with less good taste. The method of construction is so much a matter of pulling stock situations haphazardly out of pigeon-holes that at least one important character gets completely mislaid. Pre-fabrication may be all right for houses, but hardly for pictures.