I recently was in the mood for an old movie, and stumbled upon Here Comes the Groom on YouTube. I ‘m always a sucker for a good Bing Crosby film. Little did I know, it would suck me in from the get go. The film is a 1951 musical romantic comedy film produced and directed by Frank Capra and starring Bing Crosby and Jane Wyman. Based on a story by Robert Riskin and Liam O’Brien, the film is about a foreign correspondent who has five days to win back his former fiancée, or he’ll lose the orphans he adopted.
What happened to the HEART and story from today’s films?? Within the first 10 minutes of Here Comes the Groom I was crying and was hooked. I haven’t felt that in quite some time when watching a film. ……..now that I think about it that part of Toy Story 2 with the sequence of Jessie being forgotten tugged at my heartstrings quite a bit. But who pulls at heartstrings anymore and does it in a way that’s NOT obviously pandering to the audience and actually fits the story and the characters in that situation. When its done correctly it feels like you are a fly on the wall, and you are privileged to be experiencing it WITH the characters. More often than not, if its done incorrectly, it feels phony and its being used as a device to attempt to get you to care about a character instead of being INVESTED in the future of that character.
Of course this is a Frank Capra film we are talking about here. However, I was not aware of that when I first put it on but had my suspicions it might be. One of the masters of his craft for sure, but who BETTER to learn from than from this example.
If you have NOT seen it I highly encourage you to go give it watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgaDEs9fIyc