Talk about night and day.
Spencer Tracy (Judgement at
Nuremburg) plays the father, Stanley Banks, and the main complaint I have
is that he remains so crotchety throughout the production. He’s furiously opposed to his daughter’s engagement
and never seems to fully let it go. At
one point he even seriously offers the lovebirds $3,000 to elope so he won’t
have to deal with the situation anymore.
This performance reeks too much of its own time for me. The father-knows-best attitude is really off
putting and his reactions seem a little too starkly real.
Stanley’s wife, Ellie (Joan Bennett (Suspiria)), is surprisingly strong considering the general direction
of the movie. She stands up to her
husband more than a few times, is happy for her daughter almost right away like
Nina and gets just as engaged in arranging the wedding.
Elizabeth Taylor (Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?) plays the bride, Kay, and she’s not very good at
all here in my opinion. She goes too big
with her emotions in every scene and comes across as very unnatural. I know that was partly the acting style of
the time but I’ve seen a lot of movies of that era and she inflates her acting even
for then. She’s not nearly as empowered
as Annie from the ’91 version but considering the time period I won’t blame the
movie for things like expecting Kay to become a housewife after she gets married.
There is a wedding coordinator but he’s not some off the
wall euro trash guy. Instead he’s an
incredibly snobby Englishman that assumes the Banks’ are much richer than they
really are. This character plays a very
minor role here being in only two scenes I think.
The changes to the story are really so minor that I’ll only
go through a few brief examples. When
the Banks meet the Dunstans (the groom’s parents) George doesn’t accidentally
break a mirror and throw their bank book in the pool. Here he gets totally wasted, babbles on about
Kay endlessly and falls asleep on the couch.
The reason why Kay and Buckley break up for a moment in the middle of
the movie is because Buckley wants to honeymoon in Nova Scotia where he can
fish instead of gifting her a blender (both Kay and Annie irrationally
overreact equally though). Kay has two
younger brothers closer to her age than just one that’s thirteen years younger. Instead of meeting abroad Kay and Buckley
apparently went out for a little while and got engaged right at home. The weird thing is no one seemed to notice. Kay’s parents have never heard of Buckley and
are surprised at everything she tells them.
Having Annie get engaged while away from home was a much better and much
smarter move in the ’91 one.
I really wouldn’t recommend watching this. It’s so flat, stiff and even sorta unpleasant
to sit through. Nothing works very well. It feels like Stanley is being forced through
the entire occasion, like George in the ’91 remake, but the difference is
George realized incrementally how silly and insensitive he was being. He grew emotionally from the experience. All the way through to the end Stanley comes
across like the wedding is a total annoyance and that he can’t wait for the
whole thing to be over and done with. You
get the vibe that it wasn’t really worth it to Stanley and that’s sad.
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