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.

There are obvious similarities between this and America's "It Happened One Night". Preparing to marry a pompous businessman she can't stand to cinch a deal for her father, Jessie Matthews looks at the picture of her fiancée, sticks her tongue out, and bolts. The groom is humiliated, the father is devastated, and she is robbed while hiding out on a train far away. Believing that the sleeping man (Owen Nares)opposite her has her purse (it's actually his briefcase), she tries to retrieve it, and he accuses her of robbing him. Holding her for the police, he can't keep her in his grasp (she slips away from him in a most clever way), yet ends up finding her in his car anyway. He is forced to take her back to his pad, has lots of explaining to do when his fiancée (Carol Goodner) shows up, and even more when his society pals arrive and think Matthews is the girl he's engaged to.Quick moving comedy with a few snappy songs, this is a rare glimpse into what American audiences were missing in areas that did not get these British imports. Matthews would later gain some exposure with classics like "Evergreen", "First a Girl" and "It's Love Again", but outside of New York City, pretty much nobody in the United States even knew who she was. She has a sparkling personality, yet unlike other British actresses who made it big here, never had an interest in crossing over to Hollywood. Fortunately, we're getting to discover her now, and it is obvious that she is worth discovering. Some of the men may seem a bit pompous, or their levels of humor like something from outer space, but with a renewed interest in British culture (thanks to the Merchant Ivory films of the 1980's and 1990's and the BBC series "Downton Abbey"), us Yanks are taking pleasure in seeing sides of British society we hadn't been interested in before. Oh, and by the way, I think this is much more entertaining than the somewhat overlong "It Happened One Night", even with the manly Gable and the leg-exposing Colbert.

This British film begins with a father practically selling his daughter to a man in order to make a big business deal take place. Not too surprisingly, the bride soon runs away—after all, there appears to be no romance whatsoever—just a sleazy business deal.Shortly after this interesting start, the film falls apart for me. That's because the runaway bride is now on a train and it sure looks as if she's trying to rob a man. So what does the man do when he awakens? Does he call the police? Well, considering she refuses to account for what she was doing or who she was, his actual course of action in the film makes absolutely no sense—none. Instead of turning her in, he takes her with him and gives her 24 hours to tell him who she is! When she does tell him the truth, she inexplicably gets him to agree not only NOT to turn her in but hide her for 24 hours—at which point, he new husband will be on his way to South America. Who thought this was a viable plot for a movie?! Certainly not any sane person and the film completely lost me at this point. A radical rewrite was needed, as the plot simply made no sense at all and the film was a waste of time.