An unremarkable (by today's standards) childrearing melodrama in which Cary Grant delivers a performance so good that he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. George Stevens directed the script by Morrie Ryskind.
The whole movie unfolds as a series of linear flashbacks, each triggered by the Lp records a disconsolate Julie (Irene Dunne) is playing on a gramophone just before she leaves her house for good. The reason? There does not seem to be anything left in her marriage to keep her there. We are soon to learn the fancy why and all the tragic events that led her to that wistful moment.
Japanese School Girls
The first join of times the revolving Lp description dissolves into a "memory hole" through which we enter a slice of life in Julie's past, we enjoy it as a manifestation of a director's creativity. But the sixth or the seventh time that happens, we wonder how many times we have to suffer the same unrelentingly mechanical idea. It gets old pretty quickly proving that consistency is not all the time a virtue.
Cary Grant plays the young and dashing newspaper reporter Roger Adams who marries the love of his life Julie (played by Irene Dunne) on the eve of his departure to Tokyo to take over his newspaper's Japan bureau. It also happens to be the Christmas night, faultless with the obligatory snowfall (as in an additional one Cary Grant movie, Bishop'S Wife (1948)).
Once established in Tokyo, Roger has Julie join him at his new opulent digs faultless with a family of Japanese house servants. Julie is both delighted and astonished that Roger can retain that level of luxury with only a reporter's salary. We remember an earlier scene in which her friend Applejack (Edgar Buchanan) warned her against getting involved with a journalist. Is there something shady about Roger or past that we would know about yet?
Two arresting things happen during the "Tokyo sequence" that bring both Roger's character and the script's force into question.
In the first scene, Roger announces Julie that he has quit his job thanks to his family inheritance. Now they can go tour colse to the world before they settle down and raise a family, although during their dating period Roger showed some reluctance to suffer pranks of children (the beach scene) gladly.
It turns out what Roger calls "an inheritance" is just about ten thousand dollars, which shrinks additional down to ,000 after he pays his excellent bills. It is a let down for Julie. He accuses Roger by acting "childishly." We'll see this pattern for the rest of the movie: Roger will all the time come across as a man with grand ideas and much self-confidence who, however, can't deliver the bacon at the end.
The second leading amelioration in the "Tokyo sequence" is the earthquake that levels their home. As we continue to watch to see the "payoff" of this totally unexpected natural disaster, the film abruptly shifts back to San Francisco where Julie is lying in a hospital and she learns that she will not be able to bear children anymore. But why did they have to go to Japan to arrive at that point is a moot script interrogate that is left unanswered. Couldn't the same fate befall Julie if she had an additional one urgency closer to home? Why did they have to go all the way to Japan, is not clear. The whole "Tokyo episode" stands out like a joke without a punch line.
The rest of this drama unfolds as the story of the married couple's desperate effort to adopt a child, and once adopted, not to lose her.
There is yet an additional one "baby sequence" in the middle of the movie which could certainly be part of an unrelated comedy. Grant again excels in this sequence, approximately paying tribute to the early years he spent during his teens as a pantomime and acrobat with Bob Pender's troupe. We see the young join going through many of the anxieties in taking care of their adopted 5-week daughter. (Is she asleep or did she quit breathing?)
They are so inexperienced, they don't even know how to hold a baby or bath her and change her diaper.
But we can't also help consideration the improve of a father-daughter bonding between Grant and his baby daughter despite the fact that originally he asked for a 2-year old boy "with blond curly hair and blue eyes."
For the first join of years Roger's newly established weekly newspaper business, helped by the press veteran Applejack, seems to be manufacture the ends meet. But then his enterprise takes a sudden downturn and suddenly he is a man without an income.
Since they are still at a "probationary period" in their adoption process, the ever-vigilant adoption division in the person of Miss Oliver (Beulah Bondi) takes Roger to court. The judge is supposed to take the girl back because a family without earnings is not a fit place for any child to grow up in.
However, Cary grant in yet an additional one perfect scene, delivers this certainly emotional monologue about the pain of disunion from his daughter, and the absurdity of taking a child back as though she was a car or a furniture repossessed because the owner has been late in payments. His petition as a heartbroken father wins the day and the judge allows him to take her back home.
After so many spinning gramophone records dissolving into flashback scenes, we watch the child grow and take a small part in a Christmas play at school as her very proud parents watch her and give all their retain despite a minor mishap on the stage that ruins her day.
Then disaster strikes, as it should in a tragedy. We read in a letter written to Miss Oliver that the child has died following an illness. Since up to that point we have not seen a singular scene in which the child suffered from any bodily ailments, this also comes across as contrived a plot point as the earlier " Tokyo earthquake."
After the death of their daughter Roger and Julie's union starts to unravel quickly. The girl was the bond that kept them together. Not that she is gone, all left behind are the memories and the songs Julie plays one last time on her gramophone - and we zoom back to the present.
Just when we think their marriage is gone out the window forever (Roger is certainly carrying her suitcases to the car waiting outside), they receive this astonishing call from Miss Oliver who gives them the good news: she has a 2 year old boy "with blond curly hair and blue eyes" and would they be concerned in adopting him? What fortunate timing and what a convenient plot device!
Of policy they jump on the occasion and change their minds right on the spot - they don't want to be separated after all. There is still hope for the hereafter and we leave them as they are discussing their ideas on how to redecorate the baby's room for their new boy.
A 7 out of 10 thanks to an perfect performance by Cary Grant and despite the weak script and the formula-driven directing.
Movie Trivia: Cary Grant was very pleased to share the lead roles with Irene Dunne. He reportedly told Dunne that she was the "best smelling leading lady" he worked with in a film.
Trivia: Philip Barry wrote the stage play originals of the two movies that help define the movie careers of Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn who starred in both of them: Holiday (1938) and Philadelphia Story (1941).
Movie spin - Penny Serenade (1941)
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