In Father of the Bride, the humor of pre-wedding insanity is tempered with a tender reality of sadness and loss by excellent ensemble acting, combined with director Vincente Minnelli's elegant camera style. In her book, Vincente Minnelli, Catherine de la Roche writes: “From the first image to the last, the film is an anthology of the absurdities which accompany a middle-class wedding.... Tracking along the length of a table strewn with the debris of the wedding feast, the camera pauses on the solitary figure of Spencer Tracy, slumped in a chair, as he begins to tell, in his inimitable wry tones, how it all happened.... Vincente Minnelli...direct(s) his cast to play with a minimum of emphasis and a maximum of naturalism--a sort of casualness which make(s) Elizabeth Taylor and Don Taylor one of the most convincing ‘modern' young couples ever to appear on screen.... But it is Tracy's beautifully controlled performance and the minutiae which grace the action that give Father of the Bride its rare quality....”