NR | 1h 32m | Comedy | 1950
The film “Father of the Bride,” based on a novel of the same name, pokes good-hearted fun at a doting father contending with the fact that, as he gives his daughter away in marriage, his baby girl isn’t a baby anymore. Amid the laughs, it also salutes the sanctity of the traditions of marriage and family.
Middle-aged Stanley Banks (Spencer Tracy) recalls how talk of his daughter Kay’s (Elizabeth Taylor) wedding first started. Kay, his darling “kitten,” coolly announces to him and his wife, Ellie (Joan Bennett), at the dinner table that she’s marrying the man she loves, Buckley Dunstan (Don Taylor). Shaken at first, Ellie soon joyously plunges into pre-wedding preparations. Shell-shocked, Stanley childishly conjures disasters ahead, especially of a financial variety.
First, Stanley worries if Buckley is economically stable enough to provide for Kay. Next, fretting over minutiae at Kay’s engagement party, Stanley misses out on all the fun. Later, he taunts Kay and Ellie into trimming their church and reception guest list; he’s aghast at the ballooning bill. Finally, to save on expenses, he goes as far as to secretly goad Kay into eloping and then impishly pretends he’s too thoughtful a father to dream up such thoughtlessness.
As the grand day approaches, Kay’s so frazzled that even a tiny misunderstanding ends up triggering her; she threatens to call it all off. Meanwhile, Stanley shrinks from his overblown fears of forfeiting Kay’s love and gratitude. And Ellie wonders if his antics will disrupt everyone else’s lovingly laid arrangements.
Tongue-in-Cheek Tracy
In one sense, Minnelli’s film is about those moments when Stanley walks Kay down the aisle. In another sense, it’s about Stanley contending with entire lifetimes: one he’s lived so far with Kay under his care, and another he’s yet to live—with her under the care of another, younger man.Many of Minnelli’s narrative gags seem happily married to his subtle style here, even if the odd one seems a trifle divorced from it. Forty-year-old Bennett is beautiful. And Taylor is radiant, well before she’s in bridal wear.
Tracy isn’t cut out for full-blown farce but samples it in a three-minute silent sequence, trying on his ancient cutaway suit just so he doesn’t have to buy a new one. That said, he’s on firmer ground with softer humor; his legendary gravitas renders his darker lines of dialogue not just comical but hilarious.
Confiding in Ellie, Stanley fears the worst about Buckley even before getting to know him: “Probably got a wife somewhere else. Read about those things all the time. Fellas have wives in three or four places. Families! How do we know? Maybe … a criminal record. Might be a counterfeiter ... [or] confidence man.”
At dinner, Ellie scolds Stanley for smarting at the very suggestion that Kay might get married. Chastened, he still complains at being blindsided that Kay broke the news to him so casually, while he was having ice cream. Couldn’t she have waited, at least until he’d gotten to coffee?
Later, as a flailing Stanley tries to cap runaway costs, Ellie says she has good news: “The church is free.”
Stanley sighs, glad that at least something’s free.
Ellie clarifies. She meant that the church is “available” on the appointed date.
