"I think the film thinks it's setting you up to believe the women want to go with the brothers but the brothers go about it the wrong way (partly due to them being mountain men with no manners or good raising)."
Yes, that is a vital aspect of the film that a lot of people forget or ignore in discussing how politically incorrect it is today. The point is supposed to be that all of those women WANT to be with the Pontipee brothers, rather than the townsmen to whom they have been promised even though they don't love them, but the social constructs of the time prohibit the women from making their own choices on whom to marry. And that's why the brothers make the horrendous decision that what they need to do is kidnap the women, because that's the only way to get them. So it's quite a complicated little story, because the men do something terrible and heinous in order to achieve what the women (and the men) want but can't get any other way.
P.S., not long ago I finally read the short story on which SEVEN BRIDES is based, and -- wait for it! -- in that story, it's Millie (the Jane Powell character) who suggests to the brothers that they kidnap the women!!!! So, as much as some people hate the movie for the kidnapping plot, that whole sequence was rewritten to make it at least a little more palatable than it was in the source material. |
