Father of the Bride (1950)

Father of the Bride is an American comedy romance film first released in 1950, directed by Vincente Minnelli.  The film stars Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, Elizabeth Taylor, Don Taylor and Billie Burke.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


Stanley and Ellie Banks are an ordinary middle-class American couple who have lived a well-ordered, trouble-free life – until that awful Earth-shattering day when their daughter Kay announces that she intends to get married.  Seized by anxieties that only a father about to lose his daughter can ever know, Stanley immediately insists on meeting the man who is about to steal his beloved Kay so that he can find out everything he can about him, right down to his bank balance and shoe size.  Far from being the psychopathic child-molesting gold-digging hoodlum that Stanley had been expecting, Kay’s intended turns out to be a nice, respectable young man, and so now all that Stanley has to worry about is the cost of the wedding.  He had been hoping that Kay would have the good sense to opt for a modest affair, but instead she insists on a church wedding with all the trimmings.  Stanley soon realises that the price of his daughter’s happiness could very well be financial ruin of the kind not seen since October 1929...

Spencer Tracy is perfectly suited to play the sympathetic lead in this gentle comedy, directed with by Vincente Minnelli with his customary aplomb.  Skilfully combining pathos and slapstick, Tracy’s nuanced performance captures the anguish and anticipation of a father facing the prospect of his daughter’s impending wedding day.  The story has all the ingredients for a soppy homespun sitcom but the first rate performances, direction and sparkling screenplay elevate the film way above such mediocre fare, earning it a place in the pantheon of comedy classics.

Just 17 when she made this film, Elizabeth Taylor is at her most radiant, stunningly beautiful in her bridal gown (the kind of apparel she would get very used to wearing in the years that followed).   Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett make a convincing married couple; they hadn’t appeared together since Raoul Walsh’s Me and My Gal (1932) (at the end of which their character’s marry).

In their publicity, MGM exploited Elizabeth Taylor’s contemporaneous high-profile marriage to Conrad Hilton, the son of the man who founded the Hilton Hotels chain.  This certainly didn’t harm the film’s popularity and it ended up one of the most successful comedies of the year.  Indeed, the film was so well-received that a sequel – Father’s Little Dividend (1951) - was released the following year, made by the same team.  An inferior remake of Father of the Bride came along in 1991, directed by Charles Shyer and starring Steve Martin and Diane Keaton.

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