There Goes the Bride is a story about a rich, young woman who runs away from her father and her fiancé; then when she's on a train, she gets robbed and is forced to seek refuge with a perfect stranger, with whom she bickers and subsequently falls in love. Does that sound familiar? Too bad for Henry Koster, Wolfgang Wilhelm, and W.P. Lipscomb, because their movie went completely unnoticed, and two years later, It Happened One Night swept the Academy Awards!It's a very similar movie, except this one has British actors in it and a side plot involving a misidentify instead of a hitchhiking scene. Jessie Matthews is the adorable lead, and she sings the song "I'll Stay with You", whose theme is repeated throughout the film, making it a delightful old movie to watch. I happen to think It Happened One Night is overrated, as there were dozens of romantic comedies at that time which were just as cute if not cuter. I only came across this forgotten film because it was David Niven's first movie, and it's become a bit of a challenge to watch his early films and try to spot him among the extras. I wasn't successful, since the movie's loaded with crowd scenes. Still, I'm glad I watched it, and if you like watching obscure very old movies, you might want to give this one a try, too.

It wasn't perfect, and the print I saw even less so however I didn't count it down for that, but I wouldn't mind watching it again some time soon. I particularly liked the silliness of the explanations to the fiancée about who the runaway bride was and why she was in the kitchen. Another choice moment was one woman wearing the other woman's dress, and what better way to usurp her place! This movie had some very inventive comedic ideas. It was most definitely a farce and many of the plot points were therefore ridiculous. Yes, of course, she could just have said she wasn't going to be married, but clearly she wasn't the type to face the music and do the mature thing. He could have either turned her over to the police or walked on and ignored her but clearly he was intrigued by her and loved to rescue a damsel in distress, whether on a train or in the Alps. We saw the same in It Happened One Night when a spoiled, disruptive woman met a man with a hidden yen for romantic adventure.The movie appeared more modern to me in its look than many from its year, perhaps because it was British and the main characters and set were not extremely fashionable, in a Hollywood sense--this wasn't a movie draped in cinema satin starring a platinum blonde with penciled brows. (The big exception to that was her dancing which struck me as Charleston via Josephine Baker. The hands near waist, elbows forward, was apparently very popular in modeling and was shown in many movies of the period but I'd never seen it used quite this way in dance before and frankly I'm not entirely sure how she moved like that.) The French setting gave it a difference from the usual US fare, too, with a French maid who could actually have done the work rather than being employed to merely look pretty. The British view of the French as people who were willing to "sell" their offspring in a business deal was also used in The Forsyte Saga, published from 1906 through 1921. That aspect didn't appear in It Happened One Night for the same reason that reviewers of this movie thought it made no sense. In that era you only saw an American woman in a movie pressured into marrying a rich man she despised if there was a threat to her loved ones if she refused to go along with it: bankruptcy, disgrace, jail, or all three.

Jessie Matthews has a couple of nice songs to sing and she dances briefly, but There Goes The Bride can hardly be considered one of her better films.Jessie is cast as a young bride who runs away on the eve of her wedding, a wedding that she's being hammerlocked into by her father because she's marrying some guy her dad does business with. More of a merger than a marriage. She runs off to the continent, but has her bag and money stolen and worse is accused of being a thief herself. Her accuser is Owen Nares and with that old Matthews charm worms her way into his house. That part gets rather silly and unreal. Topping it all off everybody thinks she's Nares intended and Carol Goodner who is the intended isn't at all pleased with that.It all gets sillier and sillier. I wish they had given Jessie Matthews a few more songs and dances, that might have made the film better. David Niven is supposed to be in this film, more than likely in the party scene. Tried to spot him and thought I might have.There Goes The Bride isn't a horrible film, but Jessie Matthews had much better to come.

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