WEDDING NIGHT

Ireland, 1969, 95 minutes, Colour.
Dennis Waterman, Tessa Wyatt, Alexander Bastedo.
Directed by Piers Haggard.

Wedding Night sounds more sensational than it is (the advertising was worse). It is an Irish film focussing on Irish attitudes to sexuality and marriage and questions raised by the Church's position on contraception and birth control. The film is well acted by Tessa Wyatt as Maddy, who, on her wedding night, sees her mother die in an ambulance because of a difficult pregnancy. She develops an irrational fear of pregnancy and tries to avoid consummation of the marriage. Her husband, ice, a commercial artist working in London, shows heroic patience and devotion till breaking point in regard to his wife. The climax seems fairly melodramatic, but the film succeeds on the whole. It does present real people, with real problems and the whole film is pervaded by a sense of humanity and concern.

1. How was the film particularly Irish? - characters, theme, moral attitudes and behaviour. religious point of view?

2. What was the point of view of the film on marriage and birth control?

3. What kind of atmosphere did the wedding sequence and the wedding breakfast have? What impression did they make?

4. How did the sequence of the mother's death contrast with this?

5. How do you explain Maddy's reaction to her mother's death. her blaming her father. her fear of consummating the marriage and of pregnancy?

6. Did she get good advice from the parish priest, her doctor, her father. her aunt?

7. Did you sympathise with Joe? Did he do the right thing by her in waiting?

8. How did Irish Maddy fit into London?

9. Did Maddy try to overcome her fears? How self-centred was she? (especially compared with Joe's patience?)

10. How neurotic was she - especially in her nightmares and her imagination about the examining doctor?

11. Why did Joe spend the night with the girl from the firm? How far had he been pushed?

12. Why did Maddy break down? What was the point of her abuse of the parish priest?

13. What hope did she have of recovery? How successful would the marriage be? What was Joe prepared to do? What was the point of the sequence where Maddy held the baby in the hospital and tried to stop it crying?

14. Was the film good entertainment? Did its human problems absorb your attention?