Random Harvest
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Movie Reviews of Random Harvest
Movie Review: Myth at work
Summary: 5 Stars
Random Harvest is a very strange film: it ought not to work at all, but it does. The reason is that it is a kind of archetypal myth (there are Arab and Hindu stories of men suddenly losing twenty years and then recovering their original lives again in the blink of an eye) with James Hilton using memory loss (twice) here as the vehicle for the man's story. It is linked with another archetypal myth, the woman's story, a kind of Eurydice or Psyche story of her seeking Orpheus to redeem him (and her) as well -- his redemption is simultaneously her redemption. She is prepared to sacrifice everything just so he will recognize her for who she really is, even though he is staring her right in the face. The moment he sees her for who she really is, is the moment he will get his memory back, and vice versa. This is the secret of the film's power, which overrides the complete absurdity of the plot. The myth speaks to everyone who wants to be seen for who they are, or who were once seen as who they are, by someone they love, but somehow that act of being seeing as who one really is by the other, that look of recognition, has become lost over the years.
This is in another sense the apotheosis of the Hollywood obsession with the "face" -- the film keeps recurring to Garson's face as if somehow her face is the key to his self-recognition (which of course it is, and is the reason why the last shot of the film is of her face).
All kinds of silly things and implausibilities riddle the film but none of it matters. The flimsiness of the "British" Hollywood world actually adds to the mythic flavour of the film -- the fake cottage, the absurd Random Hall, the foggy streets, the stock British character actors -- it is an unreal world. On the other hand, some of the reviews here make more implausibilities than there actually are. For example, there is no reason why Colman shouldn't be older at the beginning of the film -- he's a captain (or a major) in the army.
Perhaps the most brilliant moments in the film are in the first fifteen minutes, which has a kind of German expressionist feel about it, and a beautiful rhythm. The absurdity of Smith's wartime terror mingling with the arrival of its exact opposite, the armistice, is brilliantly ironic, and deftly orchestrated. A special mention should be made of the sound -- Herbert Stothard's work, again especially at the beginning, is astonishing, it carries the plot along with its layering of remembered sound (note at the end when Smith's memory begins to come back, how the tunes recur very faintly). And Colman's acting in the early scenes is the best he ever did (the scene with the possible parents is devastating), though one does fondly recall the moment in Lost Horizon when Robert Conway loses his faith in the truth of Shangri-La. Colman was one of the one or two best screen actors -- as a screen actor -- there has ever been, because his emotional truth reads so clearly on screen. Similarly, Garson's early scenes are her best -- she has a kind of believable sweetness that goes away as she becomes the stiff-upper-lip sufferer. Her best scene is the one with him in the dressing room -- she just radiates openness and believability. She makes one believe that she's a kind of "ready-for-anything" person, and this helps propel us through a whole pile of succeeding improbabilities. The first fifteen minutes of the film are completely heartbreaking -- full of grief in the midst of wild, mass happiness (one is reminded of the carnival scene in Les Enfants du Paradis).
I suppose the hardest thing to believe in the film is that Greer Garson's character couldn't have had a stage career (she is very, very good in her song and dance number). But that is part of the subtlety of the film: there is a sense in which everyone's life is not quite working the second time around, and so it might be that she couldn't bring that fizzy innocence to the stage a second time. Another example of great acting in the film is the way in which Colman gives us a sense that though he becomes terribly successful and seemingly happy, he too is crippled. It is done with extreme subtlety -- the scene with Kitty where he looks blankly at her is amazingly done. It is one of the best things about the movie that he is matched in these scenes by Susan Peters in quality. That everything went wrong for her is such a tragedy.
A strange, great, deep, haunting film, that ought to be stupid sentimental trash, but isn't. It just carries you along into very strange emotional realms that you shouldn't be drawn into, but are. It is also an extraordinary testament to the screenwriters (all three of them!) that they could make a streamlined, powerful, story out of a really second-rate novel (contrary to other opinions). It is a complete disaster. The original novel wanders around and is endless, told at second hand by a completely contrived narrator. The novel is full of opinions about whatever the author is interested in on any subject that is of passing interest. The arrival of World War II is contrived to arrive on the last page of the novel -- at exactly the same moment as the great revelation -- as if we needed that (ah, England has found its memory again!). Ridiculous tripe. The movie starts on page 197 of my copy of the novel (where the Melbury story begins). And then movie magic strikes.....
Movie Review: The greatest tearjerker of it's era? Could be.
Summary: 5 Stars
Not many novelists have had a better and more fruitful relationship with Hollywood than James Hilton, author of the 1941 novel on which this film, starring Ronald Colman and Greer Garson, is based. Hilton's 1933 bestseller "Lost Horizon" was turned into one of the great romantic fantasy-adventures (nominated for 7 Oscars) of all time by Frank Capra in 1937; his 1934 "Goodbye Mr. Chips" was filmed in that well-regarded year of 1939 by Sam Wood, also received 7 Oscar nominations including a win for Robert Donat as Best Actor; Hilton won an Oscar himself for his screenplay of "Mrs. Miniver" three years later, which also won the Leading Actress award for Greer Garson, and Best Picture. Everything he touched for a decade or so seemed to turn to gold - or at least silver.
"Random Harvest" isn't quite as well remembered as the other films I mentioned, though it also received a lucky 7 Oscar bids, winning none in that year of "Miniver"'s dominance. It's the story of a shell-shocked World War I veteran (Ronald Colman - at 51 just a might too old to be convincing as a young soldier in the early parts of the film) who escapes from a mental hospital during the confusion and celebration of Armistice Day and falls in with a young dancehall performer, Paula (Garson), who christens the memory-impaired and stuttering man "Smithy". An accident in which Smithy knocks down a man as he's being searched for leads the two to leave the town of Melford and travel west to a small village in the hopes of Smithy getting well and retrieving his memory. He doesn't, but he and Paula soon fall in love, marry, and have a child, and he begins a career as a writer. On his way to meet a publisher in Liverpool, he gets hit by a car, falls down, and remembers who he was - but loses his recent past, and Paula. How Smithy, now wealthy scion of industry Charles Rainier, and Paula find each other again you should find out for yourself.
Simply put, "Random Harvest" is my favorite tearjerker of it's era. LeRoy's direction and the camerawork are simple, smooth and never ostentatious - sure it's got the typically lovely MGM "house style" but this is a film entirely focused on character, feeling, memory, loss. If you've never seen it before, or read the book, you'll experience quite an amazing couple of "shock" scenes, which are hard for me to judge properly now having seen the film 8 or 10 times but which do seem absolutely right in this kind of melodrama - nothing is really overdone here despite a certain silliness in the concept as the film runs towards it's glorious ending. The film removes a good chunk of the political content that the book is full of - which is probably all for the best when it comes to current audiences, it feels much more relevant as a purely romantic story about two individuals struggling to find the real truths in each other. The whole structure of the film is different as well - the novel is told in flashbacks, which would in the film be hard to do without the central revelation coming too soon; and the role of Kitty, Charles Rainier's young niece who falls for him and is about to marry him, is lessened somewhat in the film (though her central importance as a reminder to Charles that "something" is missing in his new life, something from those years he has lost, remains) while a whole subplot involving Smithy and Paula living with a clergyman in London is removed entirely. As I said - the concentration is entirely on the love story and as such it achieves a resonance and intensity that is awfully rare.
Much of this intensity is of course attributable to the lead performances of Colman, measured and never getting to the Barrymore-esque hamminess that he could be prone to, and especially Garson who I think gives the performance of her career here. Her Paula is the essence of the good, self-sacrificing person taken to a fairly ridiculous extreme - but Garson pulls it off with intelligence and real energy, she's a powerful force of life throughout and doesn't waver when "Smithy" eventually comes into his own as her equal - and she makes you believe that she could, in fact, wait a good chunk of a lifetime and singlemindedly work towards a dream that in the end seems almost mystical as it turns fantasy to awakening...
Movie Review: As Good As A Soap Could Be
Summary: 5 Stars
In 1942, Greer Garson was on a roll. She was to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress in MRS. MINIVER and she was also hailed for a stunning performance as a woman who loses her husband to amnesia in RANDOM HARVEST. It was important for Hollywood to present England in a favorable and optimistic light so Director Mervyn LeRoy used his stable of British stars to recreate a suitably stolid cast of reliable actors to people a backround that looked English but was a Hollywood sound set. The result was a superior soap that was so good so involving that the audience was regaled from the first reel to the last.
Ronald Coleman, who was in his early fifties at the time, is a soldier who is confined to a sanitarium due to loss of memory. He escapes in a daze where he meets Paula (Garson), who immediately risks her job as a singer/dancer to help him. That she falls in love with him at first glance is not so far fetched given the exegencies of wartime England. She called him "Smithy," since he has none of his own. They marry and live in relative peace and a slowly growing affluence due to his talent as a writer. When he travels to Liverpool for a job offer, he is struck by a car, and wakes up with no memory of his marriage to Paula but his memories of his prior life are intact. At this point, one might be forgiven to point a finger of dramatic slackness at the director for using such an obvious ploy, but events force us to care about his fate and Paula's fate, who guesses that something like this was inevitable. What follows is pure soap but Coleman's convincing screen persona of the erudite gentleman carries the middle part of the film. Greer Garson disappears for this mid part and her place is taken by Kitty (Susan Peters) a fifteen year old step daughter of his sister who, like Paula, immediately and totally falls for him. We see Kitty's relation slowly grow into a believable courtship, no easy feat there since the audience might have looked askance at the huge disparity in ages. They wait several years until Kitty is twenty-one and they decide to marry. There is a powerful scene in the church where they are preparing for the nuptuals and Kitty stares at his face and sees indecision. Coleman says not a word, but his countenance clearly evinces his lack of true love for her and his lingering feeling for some female during his lost years. Much of the film deals with the ramifications of Coleman's amnesia. Later, Paula reappears as his secretary and she has to hide her feelings and true identity since he does not recognize her. The final twenty minutes pushes the two toward a recognition on his part of who he was and what he did during those lost years. Little clues add up incrementally, eventually nudging him toward their former residence where the final reconciliation is made. The last scene is a study in contrasts between Coleman's face as he slowly connects the lost dots and Garson's face as she waits, hoping against hope, that he will succeed. The enduring beauty of RANDOM HARVEST is that we wait, along with Garson, for Coleman to remember. Only the best soaps can do this.
Movie Review: Mr. And Mrs. Smith
Summary: 5 Stars
The book is slightly different, due to the exigencies of the plot the screenwriters had to divulge a certain surprise in the movie because celluloid's visual nature left them no way to tell the story properly. In the book you don't find out who Charles Rainier's secretary is until the very last pages. In the movie, you know as soon as the door opens and Greer Garson enters. She's fine in this role, and she and Ronald Colman have a chemistry together that she just doesn't have with Walter Pidgeon. The one thing in this story that I just don't buy is why, why, why would Paula marry a man escaped from a mental hospital? Oh yes, eventually his good nature becomes obvious, but any sensible woman would have turned and ran once she realized he had just stepped out of an asylum and was still obviously feeble in the head. However, if she had not married him, where would the story be, so I'm ready to swallow it, and it helps that Garson really makes you believe she's interested in Colman, not just congenially, then romantically, but there's a sexual spark between them right from the beginning. And this is heightened by the way she is protective of him, as though he were her son. I love the way she calls him "Smithy." And that country cottage they live in is also out of this world isn't it?
When Colman becomes Charles Rainier that's where his real acting begins, he manages to convince you that he is indeed a genius businessman and the head of a querulous family, and yet still somewhere in his head is the foggy period in which he lived his life as "Smithy" and loved and was loved by a woman he just can't remember. No wonder poor Kitty (the seductive Susan Peters, quite winning in the part) doesn't stand much of a chance with Rainier, alluring and confident as she is.
You just hope and hope that somehow he will regain his memory (or lose his memory, depending on what side you take on the memory loss debate). Every time I see the film I still fall victim to the suspense built in to the story, and the bravura acting of Garson and Colman go the distance every time. Yes, I would agree with the many reviewers who have commented that actually both Garson and Colman are about ten years older than the characters they are supposed to be playing. But suffering has ennobled them both, and I don't think the audience would have accepted Paula if played by a young girl. The mature, sophisticated Greer Garson is perfectly cast.
Movie Review: Enthralling tale for the romantic.
Summary: 5 Stars
Random Harvest is the classic double-amnesia yarn, quite effective due to the immense talents of Ronald Colman and Greer Garson. Colman is one of my favorite actors from the olden days, one who could play anything from a rugged hero to an intellectual professor convincingly. It's a shame he's not known to modern audiences; in my book he's right up there with Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy, and Jimmy Stewart. The few of his movies available today include Talk Of The Town, Lost Horizon, Champagne for Caesar, and Random Harvest.
Here Colman plays an English World War One veteran who escapes from an asylum with a severe case of amnesia. Greer Garson (Mrs. Miniver, Madame Curie) is Paula, an entertainer who takes him in and calls him Smithy. She decides he's better off not returning to the asylum, and takes him to the country, where they start a new life together, fall in love, marry, and start a family.
After three years Smithy goes to Liverpool to answer a job offer, where he's struck by a truck in the street. The shock brings back the memory of his identity, at the cost of that of his new life, wife and all. He returns home an heir of substantial wealth and responsibility, and as years pass he takes over the family business, and eventually becomes engaged. But his three year memory gap haunts him and he breaks off the engagement, suspecting his life can never be complete, failing at every attempt to bring back memories of his lost time.
During the second half of the film the plot takes a new turn as Paula, having discovered his real identity, takes a job as his secretary. On the advice of his former doctor, played by Philip Dorn (the Papa in I Remember Mama), she can't reveal her true identity to Smithy. This becomes really engrossing. If you let yourself in on this - if you're a romantic, and let yourself be absorbed by the well-performed story - you're in for a heart-wrenching experience, an allegory for any lost love experience, as she attempts to live with him unrecognized as his former wife. But I think you will find it well worth while at the end.
The supporting cast also includes a favorite character actor, Henry Travers (It's A Wonderful Life, Ball of Fire, On Borrowed Time, etc. etc.), Susan Peters, Reginald Owen, Melville Cooper, Alan Napier, Peter Lawford and Arthur Shields (who was Barry Fitzgerald's brother).