With a screenplay by Lee Dunne (banned author of the novel Goodbye to the Hill (1965) and of the subsequent Evening Herald article “Goodbye to the Pill” (1970), Wedding Night tells the tale of Mady, a young Catholic bride who is devastated when, on her wedding day, her pregnant mother miscarries and dies. Mady (Tessa Wyatt), one of seven children, blames her father’s lust for the death. When her own wedding night arrives, she is terrified and refuses to consummate the marriage with her husband (Dennis Waterman). Her parish priest forbids her to accept her doctor’s suggestion that she should use contraception and she is driven to desperate measures.

One of the first films to comment seriously on the church’s attitude to contraception, Wedding Night is an interesting companion piece to both Pray for Our Sinners and Ann providing further insight into Irish social and sexual mores in bygone years.

Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn