There Goes the Bride

This is Jessie Matthews second sound film.Whilst she exhibits much gusto and enthusiasm she rather overacts at time and her technique is lacking.I was fortunate enough to see her give a lecture with Michael Balcon at the NFT some 40 years ago.She explained that it was Victor Saville who had helped to give her the confidence to appear in front of the cameras.Anyway having said that she is rather oddly matched with a rather stuffy Owen Nares who was 17 years her senior at the time.Nares was a popular leading man of the 20s and 30s and who was by this time heading into the twilight of his screen career.There are some enjoyable,if unmemorable musical numbers.There is only one brief dance from Jessie.This film was issued as part of the "British Classics Collection" some years ago,and is still to be purchased second hand.If you are a fan of Jessie Matthews or of 30s films it is worth seeing,if only to observe a talent in embryo

The perky and thoroughly charming Jessie Matthews is being sold off in marriage by her parents to Basil Radford, so the sensible French girl runs off to Paris, where everyone speaks like stage English people. Her purse is stolen and she winds up in the hands of a suspicious Owen Nares, who has a suspicious fiancée, for whom Miss Matthews is naturally mistaken by his gullible and mostly drunken friends.

Miss Matthews sings two songs, dances almost not at all. Like many of Miss Matthews' leading men, Mr. Nares seems frightened of women. David Niven is credited as an extra in what is supposed to be his first appearance onscreen, but I didn't spot him. Henry Koster is co-credited with the script in which the idiot plotting is barely justified and then ignored. I enjoyed it.

Although this is a talkie it has some silent film stars in it and it still has a very silent movie feel to it. The music, for one, and the overacting.

It would have worked much better if it had been a silent.

Never seen Jessie Matthews in anything before and she looks really cute, is built like Olive Oyl, and can clearly dance.

But that voice. Horrors! So plummy she makes Joyce Grenfell sound like something off EastEnders. It's absolutely unbearable and adds to the fact that, at least in this film, she just can't act. Overacting like in a silent film. It really is excruciating.

Owen Nares as the male lead reminds me of Basil Fawlty and everyone has those unbearable cut-glass accents.

The one bright spot was. Roland Culver as a drunk Jacques - an absolute delight.

One of the songs rips off 'Makin' Whoopee'.

Another enjoyable Jessie Matthews' movie!

I didn't know she was in it till I started to watch it.

I don't share the view she was over-acting.

She's just got an impish effervescence about her contributions in light-hearted musicals & comic situations of farce & misunderstandings, near-misses & genuine harmless fun that she excelled herself in!

I simply don't understand why she was not a more famous & more sought after talent! Probably it's because her movies were made in the 1930s & in black & white. This doesn't detract from quality cinema!

All of her movies I've seen are enjoyable. This is no exception!

How times have changed: probably nobody back then batted an eyelid at Jessie Matthews and Owen Nares getting together even though he was old enough to be her father - and looked like he could be her grandfather! Owen Nares was certainly a man of his time - he seems so natural with the rest of the cast who all seem to be members of the English (or inexplicably in the film, French) upper echelons of society. With the exception of the late Queen Elizabeth, these people along with their bizarre accents mysteriously ceased to exist after the war.

Nares is definitely not someone you think you'd warm to but he's surprisingly perfect in this. Were this an American film, one could imagine Carey Grant playing his character who's ordered life is turned upside down by the arrival of the whirlwind that is Miss Matthews. Again, were this an American film she'd be Katherine Hepburn - I could imagine these two in BRINGING UP BABY, very similar humour.

This film gives a beautiful glimpse into a long-gone world inhabited by a species who looked a bit like us but behaved, thought, spoke and indeed loved very differently. It's not however just a fascinating snapshot into a distant far away planet, it's actually a really fun film. Honesty, I was not expecting this to be as entertaining and enjoyable as it was. OK, it's not Monty Python or even Will Hay but it is genuinely funny - I have to confess to succumbing to a couple of laugh out loud moments as well.

Gaumont-British were one of the classier studios of the 30s but even so I was surprised at just how well made this picture was. Absolutely first rate acting - even from the minor characters, good direction, camerawork and lighting - it's even got a full musical score running through it which wasn't that common in 1932 - not just here but in the US as well. Besides being well made, what elevates this to something special is that it does magic to you!

Somehow by some strange magic, this picture makes you smile from beginning to end, you cannot help it. Well it's not magic, what makes you smile is simply the presence of Jessie Matthews - I have no idea how she does it, she just does. In her later Victor Saville musicals in the mid-30s, she is considerably more glamorous and very sexy. In this however she's as un-sexy as anyone can be and yet (even with the weird accent) she's utterly adorable and simply lovely. She's just so likeable that she makes this whole film likeable as well - you will enjoy this.