I watch a lot of classic soap operas like Dallas, Knott’s Landing, and others of that kind, and one thing that always feels like a cry of desperation for viewers is the amnesia plot. This contrivance never feels organic to the story and comes across as the writers running out of ways to stir up drama. Even some of my favorite shows have not been exempt from this contrivance: Star Trek infamously gave us the Captain Kirk amnesia plot so that they could shoe in a love story between him and a Native American woman on a faraway planet. Needless to say, I don’t have a lot of patience for plotlines like that, and it would take quite a lot to win me over with one.
Random Harvest comes very close to doing just that, but only because I liked the two leads as much as I did. Take away Greer Garson and Ronald Coleman, and what you have left is a very predictable melodrama that follows an obvious outline from start to finish. The only real surprise this screenplay has to offer is just how much time passes over the course of the story. Every time it mentions that years have passed by since the previous scene, it was eye-raising. Beyond that, nothing else was surprising in the least.
The film opens during the final days of World War I. A British officer has been gassed in the trenches and has lost his memory, confined to an asylum under the moniker John Smith (Ronald Coleman). On the day the war ends, the asylum guards abandon their posts to join in the celebration in the streets. During that lapse of duty, John Smith wanders away and disappears into the crowd. In town, he is befriended by a singer going by the stage name of Paula Ridgeway (Greer Garson). She rightfully guesses he is from the asylum but, suspecting him to be harmless, she takes him in, arranging for him to join her traveling theatrical group.
But when she overhears that the law is looking for “Smithy,” as she calls him, she flees with him to the secluded country village of Devon. There, the two fall in love with each other and eventually marry and have a child. It is there that Smithy discovers a knack for writing and, after some promising advances on some of his work, Smithy travels to Liverpool for a job interview with a newspaper. Unfortunately, in the city he is struck by a car and regains his memory while forgetting all that has happened in the three years he has been with Paula. He returns to his old life, unaware that he has left behind a wife and child in the country.
Meanwhile, Paula finally gets news of what has happened to him. She sees an article in the newspaper about Charles Rainier (Smithy), a wealthy businessman taking over the family business. She travels to the city, realizing that his memory has returned and hopes her appearance will spark recognition with him. But he doesn’t recognize her. So instead, she secures work as his secretary and bides her time, hoping that one day something will get through to his psyche and he will remember their life together.
This is a silly concept that is given a serious screen treatment, so much so that you forget just how silly it actually is. The concept was lampooned on the Carol Burnett show back in the seventies and it took very little alteration to the story to bring out the cartoonishness of it all. That being said, this is not a bad movie, not in the slightest. It takes a lot to take such an absurd concept and make a good story out of it. It also takes strong performers to get us to go along with it even as we are questioning the realism of what we are being presented. After all, amnesia, as rare as it is in reality, doesn’t quite work like it is depicted here. Swapping total amnesia back and forth like this is just plot convenience. It is that contrivance that we have to give the film in order to go along for the ride.
I was reminded of a more recent film that had a similar, but not quite idnetical, stumbling block within a romantic relationship. In this film, 50 First Dates, the woman in the relationship is suffering from short-term memory loss, unable to remember the previous day thanks to an accident in her past. What I appreciated about that film is that when the story reaches its conclusion, there is no sudden fix. The woman is still dealing with this brain damage and has to be reminded every morning of what has transpired in her life in the days past. There is no moment where she suddenly and miraculously remembers all that time lost and they live happily ever after.
Random Harvest isn’t that brave. It does take years and years for Charles to finally merge the two sets of memories together into one, but we are basically told all those years have gone by. For the most part, we wouldn’t even realize all that time was passing were we not told so in the dialogue. The sole exception to this is the relationship that Charles is finding himself involved in with Kitty (Susan Peters), a young girl that is immediately smitten with him and desires to marry. Their relationship develops over a matter of a few years until Kitty is of marrying age. He would have married her, too, except that she, sensing that he wasn’t really in love with her, releases him from his commitment to her. In the meantime, Paula has Smithy declared dead so that their marriage can be dissolved and prevent him from inadvertently becoming a bigamist.
Paula is perhaps the most patient woman in the world. She loses her husband, then her newborn child dies. When she finds her husband again, she realizes what has happened and uses great restraint by not revealing herself to him but waiting patiently for years for him to recognize her for who she is. She is advised not to reveal their true relationship lest he accept her revelation but resent her for it. And she does just that, taking work alongside him, all the while years go by with no semblance of recognition from him. That’s the power of love.
If you can give this film its premise, there is a lot to enjoy in it. If you cannot accept all the amnesia twists, then this film just will not work for you. The ending is wrapped up in a big sappy bow with Charles finally piecing together his life as Smithy and embracing Paula in a tearful kiss of joy. For hopeless romantics, it is the perfect way to end such a film. For me, it felt too obvious, and I would have liked an alternate ending that wasn’t so neatly tied up. I felt that it would have worked better had she found a way to get him to fall in love with her all over again. But that’s not what we got. What we did get isn’t exactly nuanced, but it works on the level of classic Hollywood in the 1940s.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Sidney Franklin
Best Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Best Actor in a Leading Role: Ronald Coleman
Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Susan Peters
Best Writing, Screenplay: Claudine West, George Froeschel, and Arthur Wimperis
Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture: Herbert Stothart
Best Art Direction— Interior Decoration, Black-and-White: Cederic Gibbons, Randall Duell, Edwin B. Willis, and Jack D. Moore
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Release Date: December 17, 1942
Running Time: 125 minutes
Not Rated
Starring: Ronald Coleman, Greer Garson, Philip Dorn, and Susan Peters
Directed By: Mervyn LeRoy
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