The Wedding Party (15.)
Directed by Brian De Palma, Wilford Leach and Cynthia Munroe. 1969
Starring Charles Pfluger, Jill Clayburgh, William Finley, Robert De Niro and Jennifer Salt. Black and white. 92 mins.
Shot in 1963 but not released until 1969, a student film shot in black and white, this is definitely the one you approach with a sense of dread but actually, it's a bright and breezy comedy. There's a large cast, over 60 parts, for a piece about a big society wedding on a rainy island on the east coast. The groom (Pfluger) is accompanied by his two friends (Finley and De Niro, or Denero as the credits list him) to the dusty creaky home of his bride's (Clayburgh) family. Intimidated by her large and frosty clan he begins to get cold feet.
The film is full of silent movie techniques like title cards, Benny Hill style speeded up movement, freeze frame. This does wonders for making the film watchable but is odd seeing as there is very little visual humour in it. Then again, there isn't much humour in it full stop. It moves like a comedy, it is light-hearted but for the life of you, you can't find anything funny in it.
The film grew out of De Palma's time at a workshop group at Sarah Lawrence College and most of the cast came from that group. As well as being De Niro's first film, this was also Clayburgh's debut and she is really charming as the bride. Of the co-directors, Munroe was another student while Leach was De Palma's great mentor but it was during this film that he realised that he could direct better than him. In the documentary, De Palma, he outlines how he took control from him of a dialogue scene between the groom and his two friends that Leach was going to shoot as a single shot next to a hedge and broke up it into a number of different locations. The long dialogue scene spread out over a variety of locations is a technique that he uses often over the three films.
A feature of this box set is the music, and this has a distinctive score by John Herbert Mc Dowell that works very well in short bursts but is badly exposed during the long dialogue-free sequence leading up to the final scene. The film is very difficult to get a grip on. It seems outside of time. It occasionally acknowledges the social change of the 60s but often the family seem so archaic that the film could've been set in the silent era. The three directors wrote the script and you really can't guess why they wanted to tell this story and nothing in the extras gives you any insight into the film genesis.
Directed by Brian De Palma, Wilford Leach and Cynthia Munroe. 1969
Starring Charles Pfluger, Jill Clayburgh, William Finley, Robert De Niro and Jennifer Salt. Black and white. 92 mins.
Shot in 1963 but not released until 1969, a student film shot in black and white, this is definitely the one you approach with a sense of dread but actually, it's a bright and breezy comedy. There's a large cast, over 60 parts, for a piece about a big society wedding on a rainy island on the east coast. The groom (Pfluger) is accompanied by his two friends (Finley and De Niro, or Denero as the credits list him) to the dusty creaky home of his bride's (Clayburgh) family. Intimidated by her large and frosty clan he begins to get cold feet.
The film is full of silent movie techniques like title cards, Benny Hill style speeded up movement, freeze frame. This does wonders for making the film watchable but is odd seeing as there is very little visual humour in it. Then again, there isn't much humour in it full stop. It moves like a comedy, it is light-hearted but for the life of you, you can't find anything funny in it.
The film grew out of De Palma's time at a workshop group at Sarah Lawrence College and most of the cast came from that group. As well as being De Niro's first film, this was also Clayburgh's debut and she is really charming as the bride. Of the co-directors, Munroe was another student while Leach was De Palma's great mentor but it was during this film that he realised that he could direct better than him. In the documentary, De Palma, he outlines how he took control from him of a dialogue scene between the groom and his two friends that Leach was going to shoot as a single shot next to a hedge and broke up it into a number of different locations. The long dialogue scene spread out over a variety of locations is a technique that he uses often over the three films.
A feature of this box set is the music, and this has a distinctive score by John Herbert Mc Dowell that works very well in short bursts but is badly exposed during the long dialogue-free sequence leading up to the final scene. The film is very difficult to get a grip on. It seems outside of time. It occasionally acknowledges the social change of the 60s but often the family seem so archaic that the film could've been set in the silent era. The three directors wrote the script and you really can't guess why they wanted to tell this story and nothing in the extras gives you any insight into the film genesis.
