Penny Serenade (1941)

Director: George Stevens

     “We don’t need each other anymore,” says Julie Adams (Irene Dunne) to Applejack, a true friend to her and her husband Roger (Cary Grant).  He has placed a record on the Victrola, with the song, “You Were Meant for Me.”  But she tells him to turn it off.  Julie is apparently drained of all feeling.  “When that happens to two people,” she says, “there isn’t anything left.”
     So she sends Applejack away.  But when he is gone, she turns to the phonograph again, and plays the record – and that brings back the memory of when she and her husband Roger met for the first time.  It continues that way through the film, with Julie playing one record after another, because they have all been saved in a kind of phonograph scrapbook, under the title, “The Story of a Happy Marriage,” with pictures in it, and items that loving parents save – even a little diaper.  And the film, till near the end, is just the series of her reminiscences, which we see as if they were happening live, right now. B…