Royal Wedding - It's Almost Christmas

Royal Wedding

Director: Stanley Donen

Marriages are very healthy, sir. You see, married men live much longer than bachelors.  –Chester

If that's true, they're only trying to outlive their wives so they can be bachelors again. –Tom Bowen

He didn't have to chase very hard after Ellen. She stood still and waited. –Tom Bowen

Very quiet she is, but deep. At least I hope she is deep or else she’s wasting a lot of her time being quiet. –James Ashmond

From Netflix:

Brother-sister dance duo Tom and Ellen Bowen (Fred Astaire and Jane Powell) get the chance of a lifetime when they're booked for a London performance on the eve of Elizabeth II's nuptials. In the course of their journey, Ellen meets her match in Lord Brindale, and Tom finds romance with a British hoofer. Will love break up the act? Peter Lawford and Sarah Churchill also star in this classic 1950s musical comedy.

My favorite Christmas movie is Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. I love it for the music, the dancing, the clothing, the sets… but mostly for the way it makes me feel. From the moment Royal Wedding's opening credits began, I knew this movie would stir up the same feelings. And while it never quite got to White Christmas level, it sure did make me smile without trying.

This movie was made 3 years before White Christmas, and it looks very similar. It has the same faded coloring, where the edges blur into one another. And I instantly love it. As the opening scene begins, I find I love Jane Powell’s opening number dress… and then I find I love the opening number! And I feel like this whole post is going to turn into a love letter to Royal Wedding.

They speak differently in the old movies… they’re classy yet real. And the comedic timing is different than in today’s movies. It’s not better, it’s not worse. It’s just different. And I can’t imagine switching the two. They are perfect in their time, and I enjoy them both. But in the old movies, even their voices sound different – perhaps it’s due to the less-sophisticated sound systems, or perhaps it’s just the way things were back then. I don’t know and I won’t ever know. And I kind of like that.

And speaking of timing (which I was, before I got side-tracked), how can you not enjoy Fred Astaire’s timing in both comedy and dance? He’s magical. Even when he’s dancing on the walls and ceiling, he does it with such finesse that it doesn’t look hokey. It surprised me to know, upon looking at his filmography (IMDb is the best movie companion you can have – it knows all the answers to your question and never steals your popcorn) that I’ve seen only one other of his movies: Holiday Inn. And I've seen that only once!

The movie’s plot was very simple: two siblings, famous for their song-and-dance performances, travel to London to perform around the time of a royal wedding taking place. Both Tom and Ellen seem to balk at the idea of marriage – Ellen is having too much fun playing the field and Tom is married to his job. That is, until they find their perfect matches and have to decide if love is a strong enough reason to change both their minds and their lives. It’s no surprise, of course, that love conquers all in a musical, but they played it out very well.

But not everything in the movie is perfect. There’s a scene when Ellen and John are walking over a bridge and Ellen eventually breaks into song. It’s supposed to be evening, and the older camera and lighting equipment and techniques make it hard for the viewer to properly see their faces. While I appreciate the reality of the moment – it IS hard to see folks’ faces at night – I also miss the enhanced “moonlight” effects of today’s cinema.

While Jane Powell’s character Ellen has several solos in the movie, the best numbers for me are the ones she and Fred Astaire’s Tom perform together. While she has a great voice, the solos just don’t do it for me without Fred’s accompaniment. But their dancing gets me every time! The dancing... and the clothes!

My only true complaint was that the ending felt rushed. It’s as if they got to the end of their last reel of film and realized they didn't have any left over to finish off the movie. So they tacked on a 2-minute wrap-up and hit the end credits.

My takeaway: never close your heart or eyes to love, for it tends to find you anyway; and you’ll waste a lot less time if you’re ready for it when it shows up. And I was born in the wrong decade.