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"Do not economize on the hymeneal rites," says Victor Hugo, the whole harrowing rigamarole is on display here. (The married state itself follows in The Long, Long Trailer.) The tale is recounted by the paterfamilias (Spencer Tracy) amid the fallout of confetti and rice, "a small wedding" turned "business convention." No man in his eyes is good enough for the teenage daughter (Elizabeth Taylor), of the delinquents and "radicals" she chooses the budding entrepreneur (Don Taylor) who comes to dinner with a bulging valise. "Her love is going to be doled out like a farmer's wife tossing scraps to the family rooster." Meeting the groom's parents, bartending at the engagement party, keeping the missus (Joan Bennett) awake at night with worry, a father's job is never done. Heavy heart and light wallet, "a constant state of panic" underneath the cozy veneer is the Vincente Minnelli way. The new decade's mushrooming consumerism is rather mercilessly illustrated, a screen choked with gleaming gifts, a sitcom along the lines of Sirk or Ophüls. The caterer (Leo G. Carroll) who "can make you ashamed of your house in fifteen minutes," the rehearsal choreographer (Melville Cooper) who oversees a teeming long shot in church for the benefit of Altman. Grousing to keep from crying, Dad gets the old tuxedo out of mothballs and is promptly swallowed by the checkerboard floor in a Caligari nightmare. "From now on, the gals take over," cf. Meet Me in St. Louis. The bride glows before the three-panel mirror, is seen at the altar as the weight of loss starts to sink in the paternal gaze, and vanishes in the most melancholy of Minnelli's parties. "Wedding banquet or bicarbonate of soda, you can't have both." Among the admirers is Visconti in Il Gattopardo. With Billie Burke, Moroni Olsen, Taylor Holmes, Paul Harvey and Russ Tamblyn. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |