Movie Review - Penny Serenade (1941)

An insignificant (by today's standards), parenting melodrama in which Cary Grant delivers so well that he was nominated for an Oscar for best actor. George Stevens directed the script by Morrie Ryskind.

The entire film unfolds as a series of nonlinear flashbacks, triggered by the LP records each have a sad Julie (Irene Dunne) is playing well on a phonograph, just before she leaves for her home. The reason? It does not seem anything to stay in her marriagekeep them there. There will soon understand the reason why and all the tragic events that led to this point, unfortunately.

The first few times around the record was released in a "Memory Hole", through which a part of life in July we will have fun as a manifestation of the creativity of a filmmaker. But the sixth or seventh time this happens, we wonder how often we have to suffer the same inexorable mechanical idea. It will prove old pretty quickly, that consistencyis not always a virtue.

Cary Grant is the dashing young newspaper reporter Roger Adams, who married the love of her life, Julie (played by Irene Dunne), on the eve of his departure for Tokyo to pick up his newspaper office in Japan. It also happens), Christmas Eve, with snow mandatory (as in other films of Cary Grant, Bishop's Wife (1948).

Once established in Tokyo, Julie Roger has to his new digs in its complete with an opulentFamily of Japanese house servant. Julie is happy and surprised that Roger can this level of luxury with a single reporter to get salary. We recall a previous scene in which her friend Applejack (Edgar Buchanan) warned against them, participated with a journalist. There is something shady or Roger of the past, we should know about us yet?

Two interesting things in the "Tokyo-sequence" character that happen to both Roger and the script to bring underQuestion.

In the first scene, Julie announces that Roger has left his job thanks to his family heritage. Now you can go travel the world before settling down and raising a family, even during their period of validity, Roger showed some jokes child restraint (the scene on the beach), more like.

It turns out that Roger calls a "legacy" is only about ten thousand dollars, which continues to be reduced to $ 8,000, after paying its outstanding bills. And let aOpen to Julie. Throws Roger through actions "childish." We will see this model for the rest of the film: Roger will always act like a man with big ideas and a lot of confidence that can not deliver the bacon at the end.

The second important development in the sequence of Tokyo "is the earthquake, the level of their home. As can be seen, the" payment "from this unexpected natural disaster continue to see the film abruptly shifts back to San Francisco, where Julieis in a hospital and was told that they are unable to bear more children. But why do they have in Japan to get to this point is a debatable question script that is not answered. It could not happen the same fate as Julie, if she had another accident closer to home? Why should they go to Japan is not clear. The entire "episode Tokyo" is characterized as a joke without a punch line.

The rest of this drama unfolds as the story of the couple is desperateEfforts to adopt a child, and once accepted, can not lose.

There is still a "baby-sequence" in the middle of the film, the comedy was not simply part of A. Grant excels again in this sequence almost a tribute to the early years that he spent his youth as a mime and acrobat with the company of Bob Pender. We see the young couple goes through many of the fears in the care of their adopted 5-week daughter. (She is asleep or has leftBreathe?)

I'm so inexperienced, do not even know how to keep a baby or a bath and change her diaper.

But we can not help notice the progress of a father-daughter relationship between Grant and his daughter, despite the fact that he initially asked for a 2 year old boy with blond hair and blue eyes. "

For the first few years, start-ups to weekly Roger, supported by the press Veteran Apple Jack, would be to make endsjustice. But then take a sharp slowdown in its business and suddenly he is a man without means.

Since I'm still in a "trial period" in the process of adoption, the adoption agency vigilant in the person of Miss Oliver (Beulah Bondi) Roger to justice. The court will take the girl, because a family has no income does not fit place for every child to grow in

However, Cary Grant offers another standout scene, this monologue really excitingabout the pain of separation from his daughter, and the absurdity of taking a child again as if it were a car or furniture recovered because the owner is in arrears. His appointment as the disconsolate father wins the day and the judge allowed him to take her home.

After so many melting spinning records in flashback, we see the child grow up and take a small part in a comedy Christmas in school than their parents are very proud to watch them and all theirSupport despite a small incident on stage, the debris of their time.

Then disaster strikes as it should in a tragedy. We read in a letter to Miss Oliver, the child died after an illness. Because up to this point we do not have a single scene, the child had suffered from physical ailments every seen, which also acts as a mesh point of the first artificial "earthquake in Tokyo."

After the death of his daughter Julie and Roger's Union began to unravel quickly. L 'Girl was the bond that held them together. Not that she's gone, everything left behind the memories and the songs of Julie last played on his gramophone - and we zoom back to the present.

Only if we think that their marriage is (Roger is actually carrying her bags to wait outside the car) out the window to escape, you can have this amazing phone call from Miss Oliver, of them the good news: it is a 2 - year-old boy with curly blonde hair and blue eyes "and wouldInterested in adopting him? Lucky that time and what a convenient plot device!

Of course, leap to the possibility to change their mind and live there - do not want to be separated after all. There is still hope for the future and we go out, how to discuss their ideas on how to renew their childhood again.

In 7 out of 10 thanks to a superb performance by Cary Grant and, despite the weak script and formula-drivenDirector.

Movie Trivia: Cary Grant was very pleased to share the lead roles Irene Dunne. Dunne said he intends to be "the smell Best Actress," was working in a movie.

Trivia: Philip Barry wrote the original play of two films that help define the careers of film Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, who starred in both: HOLIDAY (1938) and Philadelphia Story (1941).

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