The Wedding Night is a 1935 American romantic tragedy film directed by King Vidor and starring Gary Cooper and Anna Sten.

Written by Edith Fitzgerald and based on a story by Edwin H. Knopf, the film is about a financially strapped novelist who returns to his country home in Connecticut looking for inspiration for his next novel and becomes involved with a beautiful young Polish woman and her family.

[1] New York novelist Tony Barrett (Gary Cooper) and his wife Dora (Helen Vinson) have accumulated serious debts as a result of their fast and affluent lifestyle in the big city.

With few options available, Tony and Dora move to his family's run-down farm in Connecticut, where they meet his neighbors: a Polish farmer, Jan Novak (Sig Ruman), and his beautiful daughter, Manya (Anna Sten).

Later, a drunken Fredrik, angered by his fiancé's lack of passion and interest on their wedding night, storms out of their bedroom and goes to Tony's house to confront the man he suspects is to blame.

[6] He brought her to America and signed her to a four-year contract, spending the next year having his new star tutored in English and teaching her Hollywood screen acting methods.

[7] He poured a great deal of time and money into her first American film, Nana (1934), a somewhat homogenized version of Émile Zola's scandalous nineteenth century novel.

[10] When director King Vidor began filming scenes with Cooper, he was initially disappointed and the actor's apparent "mumbling and stumbling" style.

[4] In his review in The New York Times, Andre Sennwald praised the film for its "uncommonly adult style", calling it "both pictorially and dramatically striking".

[12] Sennwald also noted the "uniformly expert" performances by Cooper who "continues to reveal a refreshing sense of humor in his work", the "highly talented" Sten, and Vinson who is "excellently right as the wife, playing the part with such intelligence and sympathy that she contributes definitely to the power of the climax".

[12] Sennwald concludes: The Wedding Night displays an unusual regard for the truth and it is courageous enough to allow an affair which is obviously doomed to end logically in tragedy.

Although its materials are too conventional to result in great screen drama, the film is handsomely arresting, and it represents a satisfying compromise between Mr. Vidor, the realist, and Mr. Goldwyn, the romantic.

In his review for the Immortal Ephemera website, Cliff Aliperti gave the film eight out of ten stars, calling it a "frank romance" with "standout performances" by Gary Cooper, Anna Sten, and Helen Vinson.

[13] Aliperti concludes: "The Wedding Night is well-acted, touching, shocking in a few spots, and mature, with interesting visuals provided especially by the Polish ceremony of the title.