Synopsis
During a drunken party at Tony Barrett’s (Cooper) apartment, Tony’s publisher arrives to return the draft of Tony’s latest book. The book is too poor to publish. Afterwards, Tony and his wife, Dora (Vinson), discuss their impoverished state. They decide to move to the Barrett family farm in Connetticut where the rent is free.
Neither Tony nor Dora is content with the move, but they have no alternative. The neighbor, Jan Novak (Rumann) and his pretty daughter Manya (Sten) come to ask if Mr Barrett will sell part of his land. Novak offers $5000.00, and Tony accepts. The Novak’s also arrange to sell their fresh milk to Tony and Dora.
Tony goes to Novak’s house to be paid. He stays for a real Polish dinner. The women of the Novak household are subject to the rule of the men. Novak wants Manya to marry Fredrick Sobieski (Bellamy) and intends to gives Fredrick a house and land as part of Manya’s dowery. Manya is obviously not happy to be engaged to the uncultured Fredrick.
Tony receives the payment in cash, and Dora proposes that they return to New York. However, Tony decides to stay. He knows that his last two books have been poor and wants to work on a new book in the quiet of the farm. After vascillating, Dora decides to return to New York. The houseboy also misses New York and quits. Tony is left alone.
The next day, Tony is attempting to light the stove and make coffee when Manya comes with the milk. She laughs at his attempts to light a fire in the stove box. She helps him, they talk, and she tells him about herself. Tony makes advances to her, but she slaps him and leaves.
Some days later, he comes with the pail to the Novak farm. Manya is milking a cow, and Tony asks for milk. He is apologetic, and tells her that he is writing a book about her and her Polish community. He asks her to come to his home so he can read his first chapters to her.
Manya comes to Tony’s house, and he reads to her. The book is about a novelist who comes back home, meets a girl, and her influence enables him to write. For Stephen, the character in his book, (and for Tony), reading to the girl helps his writing.
Time passes, and Manya comes frequently to hear Tony read from his book. Fredrick sees Manya at Tony’s house. Novak tells his daughter not to go to Tony’s any more.
However, while her father and Fredrick are away, Manya visits Tony. A snowstorm comes up and soon advances into a blizzard. Manya tries to go home, but the fierce storm prevents her leaving. Manya spends the night at Tony’s house, in his wife’s bedroom.
In the morning her father comes and takes Manya home. Despite the scandal, Fredrick has agreed to marry her. The marriage will occur the next Monday. Manya tells Fredrick that she does not love him and will not marry him. Novak says she is a Polish girl and will marry as her father decides.
Dora returns to the farm. She learns about Manya and Tony. Dora refuses to believe that Tony is serious about Manya. Dora reads Tony’s manuscript. The book is about lovers, Sonya and Stephen, who come from totally different backgrounds. Stephen’s feelings for his wife, Daphne, decline as his love for Sonya grows.
Manya arrives, and Dora talks to her. Dora does not think that the book will end with Stephen leaving his wife. Applying the story to herself, Dora declares that she will not go away. Sonya and Stephen have not met on common ground. Daphne will fight to keep him, even if she feels sorry for Sonya. Manya says that she came to tell Tony that she will be married on Monday. Dora tells her not to see him, and Manya returns home.
The wedding is being celebrated. Tony sees the guests arriving. Dora tells him that Manya is being married. She waited to tell him until it was too late to intervene.
During the dancing after the ceremony, Tony enters and dances with the bride. Manya says that he shouldn’t have come. Fredrick takes Manya from Tony, and Tony leaves.
In the bedroom, Manya’s mother and other women prepare the marriage bed. They dress Manya in her bridal night gown. Downstairs, Fredrick and other men are drinking and toasting. Fredrick is very drunk.
The drunken Fredrick laughs as he falls up the stairs on his way to the bedroom. He admires Manya’s beauty and tries to kiss her. He says he married her despite the talk, and she should be grateful. Manya is repelled by his drunken condition and resists his embrace.
Fredrick becomes very angry at her resistance, and, blaming Tony for her coldness, rushes off to confront him. Manya’s father is unable to stop him. Manya runs after Fredrick.
In Tony’s house, Fredrick and Tony fight on the stairs. Manya runs up and tries to stop them. They collide with her, and Manya is flung backward and lands prostrate at the bottom of the stairs. Stricken, Tony bends over her and expresses his love. Manya tries to touch hiim. He carries her upstairs to Dora’s room where she dies.
Later, the doctor and the priest leave the bedroom. Manya’s mourning parents and Fredrick sadly depart.
Tony is standing at the window, looking out. Dora tells him that Manya is now alone, but he replies that he cannot look at her. On the opposite snowy hillside, he sees Manya waving to him. The shadow fades, and Tony leaves Dora alone at the window.
Discussion
The unusual storyline centers on an extreme contrast of cultures. In a small farming community in Connecuticut, a modern, sophisticated American man, a well-known novelist trying to write a new book in semi-seculsion, lives near several immigrant Polish families who retain the customs of their homeland. In particular, the Polish women are subject to the wiil of the father as head of the family. He plans the marriage of his daughter to a man of his choice. Unfortunately, the daughter does not care for the crude fellow her father has chosen but is resigned to the marriage until her interactions with the novelist make her reluctant to marry the chosen husband. The result of the girl’s dislike of the groom and mutual attraction with the married man is heartbreak for everybody and death for her.
The calm and quiet demeanor of the novelist conceals the intensity of his feelings. He is strongly attracted to the beautiful, slightly sad, young woman. Her simple, trusting, undemanding personality contrasts strongly to the personality of his sophisticated, worldly wife. Their relationship becomes the deeply personal subject for his writing.
Having established a plotline around the opposing sets of partners, one member of each pairing unhappy or dissatisfied, the scenarists had few choices for the resolution. A “happy” ending with the young woman going off with the married man would not only be weak, but would have violated the production code enforced at the time. Likewise, suicide of the young woman (the novelist does not have a suicidal personality) would have resulted in a tragic resolution, but again would have been contrary to the code. The only possible solution becomes the accidental death of Manya as a result of the actions of the men. The plot comes to a sad and somber resolution of the seemingly impossible dilemma of uniting the sophisticated, married novelist and the sheltered, ingenuous young woman.
Cooper plays it in a mellow mood, quietly intense, Sten is charming, quiet, rather pathetic. Vinson handles her dialogue beautifully. She is sympathetic as the worldy, but loving, wife who understands and wants to keep her husband.
King Vidor’s direction treats with simplicity and sympathy the tender relationship of a conflicted, sad young woman and a worldly, married man who is seeking a new direction for his art and his life. The immigrant family, attempting to maintain the traditional ways, is treated kindly. Even stolid Frederick, who lacks understanding of Manya’s feelings, is presented with some sympathy and not only as a surly ruffian. His harsh wedding night confrontation with Manya is driven mostly by his extreme drunkenness.
MGM had Greta Garbo and Paramount had Marlene Dietrich; independent film producer Samuel Goldwyn wanted to have a glamourous, fascinating European star of his own. In 1932, he saw a film with beautiful Russian actress Anna Sten and quickly brought her to America to make her a star. His first task was for Sten to learn English and speak with the fascinating tones of Garbo and Dietrich. Sten learned English but not proficiently, and she spoke carefully with a heavy accent, rather than in the seductive tones of Garbo and Dietrich.
To showcase Sten, Goldwayn chose Nana (1934), adapted from an 1880 novel by Émile Zola. In the novel, Nana is a destructively beautiful woman, so destructive that the character had to be softened for the film. After initial director George Fitzmaurice gave up on the project, Goldwyn brought in Dorothy Arzner, hoping that she could coax a star making performance from Sten. It was an impossible task. Arzner lamented that “The only thing I could do was not let her talk so much.” For his second Sten film, Goldwyn choose an adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s novel Resurrection (1899). Despite direction by Rouben Mamoulian, a first-rate costar in Fredric March, and a handsome, tasteful production, this film, We Live Again (1934), also did poorly at the box office.
For The Wedding Night, Goldwyn had an original story and screenplay, written by Edwin H. Knopf and Edith Fitzgerald, tailored to Sten’s abilities. Goldwyn also brought in another pair of first-rank Hollywood filmmakers, director King Vidor and actor Gary Cooper. Placing Anna Sten in an immigrant Eastern European family allows the filmmakers to account for her heavy accent. Despite tutoring, her speech pattern is slow and deliberate. Cooper or Vinson carry more of the dialogue in their scenes with Sten.
Even as filming was proceeding, Goldwyn admitted the failure of his Sten experiment and announced that he was not renewing her contract.
Further Reading