The Bridal Path ** (1959, Bill Travers, Bernadette O’Farrell, George Cole, Duncan Macrae, Gordon Jackson, Patricia Bredin, Fiona Clyne) – Classic Movie Review 7301

Bill Travers stars in director Frank Launder’s 1959 British comedy The Bridal Path as rough-and-ready young Scottish islander Ewan McEwan, who heads off to the mainland to find a perfect bride, but along the bridal path he is mistaken for a salmon poacher.

The amiable Travers is ideally cast in his usual muscular but simple-minded character, and George Cole, Duncan Macrae and Gordon Jackson are always good company, but this is a very gentle, rather twee Fifties British romantic comedy from the normally sharp Frank Launder.

The lighthearted and featherweight story adds up to a film that is nothing special, but it passes the time pleasantly enough, and Arthur Ibbetson’s ravishing Technicolor location cinematography of the Scots scenery stops the show.

More jokes and a subtler tone would make it better, but producers Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder’s spruce and professional film is still fairly amusing. The screenplay by Frank Launder and Geoffrey Willans is based on Nigel Tranter’s novel.

There is a fine collection of actresses too, in Bernadette O’Farrell, Patricia Bredin, Fiona Clyne, Charlotte Mitchell, Dilys Laye, Elizabeth Campbell, Annette Crosby, Joan Benham, Nell Ballantyne and Molly Weir. Also in the cast are Eddie Byrne, Terry Scott, Alex Mackenzie, Roddy McMillan, Jameson Clark and Eric Woodburn.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7301

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