Marry Me! (1949 film)


Marry Me! is a 1949 British comedy film directed by Terence Fisher, and starring Derek Bond, Susan Shaw, Patrick Holt, Carol Marsh and David Tomlinson.
The movie was formerly known as I Want to Get Married.

Plot

David Haig is a newspaper journalist who is instructed by his editor to go undercover at a popular matchmaking service to get the scoop on whether there are true cupids or not.
The film covers several aspiring relationships of various couples, including a French woman running from her abusive boyfriend and seeking citizenship, a butler, his master and a schoolteacher, an attractive girl in a restaurant who falls for a priest and various others. The central plot revolves around Haig's disastrous encounters with various poor match-ups and an ideal match a young waitress.
The film has elements of dark drama and self-pity leading to lost love, but it is primarily a romantic comedy.
Most of the gentle romances are successful, even if it takes a little 'slapstick' to achieve.
In the end, the only relationship that fails is the priest and the allure girl, as she sees herself as unworthy of his love and rejects him.

Cast

The film was a box office flop recording a loss of £67,600.

Critical

in The New York Times found the first third of the film "a delight to watch," but despite convincing dialogue and an "excellent cast", "the film as a whole is a disappointingly contrived package job". Although the reviewer thought the best story, with Guy Middleton, "rates inclusion in one of the Somerset Maugham showcases"; he overall opined the writers "have blunted their ingenious stories with some melodramatic and whimsical resolutions. Terrence Fisher's direction is strictly assembly-line."