Few rituals are as ripe for satire as the wedding, a hallowed cultural institution whose ingrained core of showiness has steadily developed into the catalyst for rampant displays of excess. Add in the event’s natural status as a flashpoint for drama, the sense of transition it imposes and the routine gathering of a gallery of often-opposing personalities, and you have the makings of movie magic. Yet directing a successful wedding movie is also a tall order, involving the juggling of a handful (or even several dozen) different characters, a condensed timeline packed with scheduled activity, and other logistical and narrative demands. That Robert Altman’s films already engage with these demands on a regular basis makes something like 1978’s A Wedding appear to be a natural fit, but even such challenges didn’t prove sufficient for the renegade director, who jams so much action and incident into 125 minutes that it begins to seem like a form of purposeful abstraction, resulting in a feat of editing and assembly that also makes for an entirely disorienting experience.
Part of this is due to an inveterate need to keep pushing limits, refusing to settle into any kind of set formula or make anything resembling a “normal” movie, but the shambolic approach here also feels intentional, communicating the unique chaos of being caught in the middle of a huge family event. Buoyed by healthy budgets due to sporadic earlier successes, lingering counterculture cred and ongoing support from studio head Alan Ladd Jr., who championed his style, Altman had license to continue expanding his narrative and formal palette. As such, A Wedding presents further procedural challenges, involving his largest cast up to that point, with around three dozen principal characters. That he largely pulls it off is a testament to a developed level of skill in a very specific mode. This time all the overlapping dialogue, frenzied crosstalk and the surfeit of plot complications are packed into a single setting, a cavernous-but-cramped mansion and adjoining estate, crawling with a rogue’s gallery of weirdos. This constrains the action to some extent, as does the ordered roll-out of the matrimonial itinerary, but these limitations also help set a solid rhythm in what’s otherwise a completely freewheeling farce.
The story concerns the nuptials of Dino Corelli (Desi Arnaz Jr.), the scion of a wealthy, mafia-adjacent Chicago family, and Muffin Brenner (Amy Stryker), whose father is a nouveau-riche Southern trucking baron. Muffin, a virginal waif still equipped with braces, sums up the overmatched cluelessness of the Brenners, who are all unprepared for the swirling dysfunction of the Corellis, a clan with more than its share of secrets. This includes Muffin’s sister Buffy (Mia Farrow), whose free-spirited (although largely mute) libertinism prefigures the fact that she’s been impregnated by the groom. This is only one of many bombshells dropped within a sprawling ensemble narrative that seems determined to blow through a season’s worth of soap opera scenarios in two hours.
There’s some kind of joke here in the organized crime family being the more established one, and the script appears to be having a lot of fun with the characters’ names, but in general the humor whizzes by, more associated with a condensing fog of satiric whimsy than specific gags or set pieces. Another source is the interplay between the three main tribal units – Kentucky Irish, Chicago Italian, and Midwestern WASP – with another layer of plot complications devoted to the way the Corelli’s have previously grafted themselves by marriage onto an existing old-money family, who are either clueless or willfully ignorant about their half-obscured mob connections. Only the families are attending the reception, all but a few intrepid friends too afraid of these connections to be spotted at the event. The disjunctions here are further accentuated by a very weird cornucopia of actors, spanning from Lillian Gish to Dennis Franz, which has only grown stranger in the years since.
At a basic level, A Wedding is a mess. Much of the comedy feels strained, either over or underplayed, and the satire is broad and clumsy. Any potential class commentary gets buried in a snowdrift of material, and there’s so many characters that it becomes difficult to sort out what function each one is supposed to be serving. The exact tone and intent of the caricature is also hard to determine, with the whole rambling story coming off as the off-kilter centerpiece of a very shaky comic assault. Yet it also appears that all this excess is the point, part of a program of festive abundance that seems determined to overspill its bounds.
Unlike earlier work like Buffalo Bill…, where the disorder of the film radiated outward through its entire structure, this one has a sturdy, snap-together feeling. Written in conjunction with several collaborators, some of them appearing as actors in the movie, and edited by Tony Lombardo, A Wedding really moves, with a rhythmic refusal to linger that makes even its bad jokes and off-key notes feel like staccato accents rather than total missteps. Applying an early, innovative use of lapel mics, Altman was able to shoot without booms, making it easier to cram so many characters together in confined spaces. The result is an overstuffed farce which refuses catharsis by denying the possibility of a solution to anyone’s problems, its tangle of complications instead tightening into the kind of manageable knot that everyone can pretend to ignore.
Another key here may be in the collection and dispensation of actors, a secondary element that on closer inspection seems key to the entire enterprise, confirming A Wedding as another punchy Hollywood burlesque in disguise. At one end are the silent icon Gish and the ‘30s-era director John Cromwell as two elders on their way out, representing a passing of the torch. On the other are New Hollywood stars like Farrow, and lesser lights like Arnaz, both part of an elaborate nepo baby casting joke that also doesn’t fully scan. In between character actors, Altman regulars and comedians (including Carol Burnett and Altman regular Paul Dooley) butt up against international stars like Vittorio Gassman, playing a character forced to obscure his Italian heritage. In this case, the industry parody works, because it plays less as sour reprisal, more as a joyful paean to the chaos of the movie-making process, linked to a clear love of cinema’s transformative properties. The film may be a major jumble, but the sense of craft behind that anarchic pastiche and the creative ambition which inspires it make it difficult to deny.
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