THE RAZOR'S EDGE (1946)

Young Tyrone Power is given grief by his wealthy girlfriend Gene Tierney, because she wants him to quit "loafing" and get a high-powered job and acquire a lot of money that she can be proud of.  He loves her, but a brush with death on the final day of WWI left him filled with questions about the purpose of life.  He moves to Paris to find himself.  During this same time a friend, Anne Baxter, gets married to a simple man, they have a child and are quite happy together.  I'm not going to get all into the rest of the story, you can do that yourself, but I liked THE RAZOR'S EDGE.  It's a pretty slow starter, but it's redeemed by a very good second half.

The reason I watched THE RAZOR'S EDGE was, as you don't remember, I was curious about how Anne Baxter won over Teresa Wright from THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES for Best Supporting Actress...and I'm still curious.  Anne Baxter's performance was very good, but not near as perfect as Teresa Wright's.

THE REMARKABLE MR. PENNYPACKER (1959)

[Update 02/26/2021: need to redo this review and update all of the screenshots.]

Light comedy about a free-spirited dude back in the late 1800's who runs a successful business with two branches, one in Philadelphia and the other in Harrisburg. That's all fine and dandy except that he also has a secret family in both towns with a total of seventeen kids!!! Somehow he's been able to keep the news of the two different families a secret for all of these years, but now that his oldest daughter (from the Harrisburg family) is getting married and the cat might be out of the bag.

The premise for THE REMARKABLE MR. PENNYPACKER is pretty outrageous and ripe for all kinds of crazy THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK-style hijinks, but it just never happens. The reason Preston Sturges was so successful with TMOMC is he took an outrageous subject matter and went way over the top with it. Unfortunately, TRMP takes an outrageous subject matter and just kinda sits there like a bump on a log. Yeah, there's a few risque jokes and a some humorous moments, but there's never any real sense of danger or consequences for Pennypacker's actions. He's just kinda like "Whatever! Fuck it!" the entire movie.

THE REMARKABLE MR. PENNYPACKER is a pleasant movie that goes by fast enough, but I think it played it too safe for it's own good and just kinda whitewashed over a lot of the more unpleasant things that would arise from a situation like this. Worth a watch.